The lede story in the Republic today is a look at how Jan Brewer’s approach to mental health funding has been shaped by her son, who is in a state hospital after being charged with sexual assault and kidnapping.

He was found not guilty by reason on insanity and has apparently been in the hospital for most of that time, though the paper is vague on this point. (Earlier, it said that the son had attended Brewer’s inauguration.)

Nowhere in either of the two stories about the case does it say what it was her son actually did.

New Times reported this a few weeks ago:

According to a Phoenix Police Department report dated July 29, 1989, Brewer, then an unemployed 25-year-old, forced his way into a woman’s apartment on West Indian School Road and threatened to hurt her “real bad” if she didn’t engage in sexual acts, including performing fellatio.

The Republic story says Brewer lost her other son three years ago:

Other personal family tragedies, such as the death of son John Brewer in January 2007 from cancer and AIDS are spoken of [by Brewer] only briefly.

A related story in the paper today is about a backstage battle to keep Brewer’s son’s criminal record out of the public eye. A judge yesterday stated the obvious, that the matter was part of the public record.

New Times broke the story a few weeks back; the Republic, in keeping with its idiosyncratic approach to journalistic niceties, kept the issue under wraps:

“I believe The Republic has been sensitive to the issues involved in this case and responsible in its reporting while, at the same time, working diligently to protect the public’s essential access to criminal-case files,” said Randy Lovely, Republic editor and vice president for news. “Obviously, we’re appreciative of the court’s ruling.”

The Republic decided not to publicize the story until the ruling was finalized on Monday.

Emphasis added. The story is confusing. Apparently, the son, who is apparently sane enough to worry about his mother’s political career, requested and got his files sealed.

The Republic got a copy of them this year, apparently through a mistake in the clerk’s office. Then the governor learned, in an interview with a republic reporter, than the file was open.

Then things get opaque:

… [Brewer’s] son’s attorney, Reginald Cooke, asked a judge to force Phoenix Newspapers, the newspaper’s parent company, to return the case file and prevent the paper from printing anything contained in it. PNI asked the judge to unseal the file.

On one level, this doesn’t make any sense, because this would seem to be a case of prior restraint. A judge can’t stop a paper from printing something in the public record.

It’s possible that the the paper’s lawyer’s decided that the matter turned on a slightly different issue; that since, whether rightly or not, the case was sealed, the paper could have been liable for publishing it, and that the smarter tack was to just make the case that the file was wrongly suppressed.

That’s a defensible argument, I suppose.

Suppressing the story about the actual battle while it was going on, during an election campaign?

That’s not defensible at all.