Mr. Novak

I'm going to try to be brief because our views on the propriety of the court's order were set forth in a publicly filed document, which of course the court has reviewed.

And the first thing that I want to say is that the order that the court issued is not a prior restraint on any

member of the public, and it's certainly not, I think as the state's motion suggested, some sort of a prior restraint on the press.

This has nothing to do with the press.

The order, as we noted in our papers, is directed at the conduct of and the court's expectations for counsel.

So even if, under that order,

that the court issued, somebody who we could all agree is a witness within the court's definition of that, made public statements which implicated Mr. Robinson's fair trial rights.

The potential sanction is on the party who had a duty to make a reasonable effort to notify witnesses that they should not be doing so.

If I represented a witness who was accused of saying too much publicly, the first thing that I would tell this court is the order isn't directed at the witness.

The order is directed at the counsel for the parties.

There may in the future be some theoretical situation where the court issues orders that control the statements or conduct of specific people.

But this, or other than counsel, but this order is directed at counsel.

And we have no, meaning Mr. Robinson's defense counsel, have no problem complying with the order.

And we also think that we understand what a witness is when the court uses that term.

So it is our view that the court's order is not overbroad, it's not vague, doesn't put

the state or the state's attorneys in some untenable position.

And I think it's a little bit,

It's a little too simple to say witnesses are either everybody under the sun or people who are under subpoena at the last second.

Because counsel have not only the training but a duty to figure out along the way who the potential witnesses are and to notify those people.

And yes, down the road, maybe there's going to be an issue and maybe an attorney on either side of litigation is going to have to explain to the court