It's been a while since we've talked about the "Sniper" case. It's in the news because of leaks about juvenile suspect's John Lee Malvo's supposed confession. The defense has filed a motion to suppress Malvo's statements arguing his rights were violated.

Someone with access to the tapes of Malvo's statements read portions of a summary of the tapes to the New York Times. In an article yesterday, the Timees says the tapes show possible flaws in the statements. Police are worried. They should be. But that doesn't justify leaking the statements to the public in an obvious attempt to prejudice the jury pool.

An investigator involved in the case said today that the sniper task force did not object to the leak because there was a strong likelihood that the statements would will be suppressed anyway. "This way at least the public will know what he said," the investigator said.

In our opinion, this is egregious police misconduct and we hope the Court holds a hearing and imposes some heavy sanctions on the party responsible for the leak. Aside from the general impropriety of leaking a suspect's statements, the Court imposed a gag order on the police back in December that prevents them from "disclosing the existence or contents of any confessions, any discussion about the reputation or criminal history of the suspects or of any prospective witnesses, and any opinions regarding evidence in the case." We wrote at length about the need to gag the police in the case here. In addition to the potential violation of Malvo's rights, there are other problems with the statements:

But the summary of the statements does not provide explicit indication of a confession. Instead, it suggests vague answers to questions that some defense lawyers for Mr. Malvo have speculated were designed to frustrate the task force or to protect Mr. Muhammad.

You can access all of our sniper case coverage here.