MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) – The Vermont Supreme Court ruled Friday that a South Burlington television station had no right to keep from police unaired tape of a riot at the University of Vermont that took place after the Boston Red Sox beat the rival New York Yankees in last year’s playoffs.

The court ordered the station to turn over the tapes immediately. WCAX said Friday that it would comply later in the day.

“In the circumstances of this case, no privilege, qualified or otherwise, excuses WCAX from furnishing the videotape of the riot,” the unanimous court said.

The legal battle began last Oct. 21, when more than 1,000 young people, most of them students at the University of Vermont, gathered on campus the night the Red Sox beat the Yankees in the American League Championship Series.

The students’ celebration quickly turned to a riot in which fires were set, a vehicle was tipped over and light poles were toppled, among other damage.

Authorities estimated the rioters did about $30,000 in damage.

Five students were charged, but Chittenden County State’s Attorney Robert Simpson said he had been stymied in prosecuting 17 of the crimes catalogued by police and had been only able to collect $8,000 in restitution.

In oral arguments held during the court’s annual trip to the Vermont Law School in March, Simpson said the station’s 44 minutes of videotape of the riot constituted “some of the best evidence imaginable” of the crimes committed during the riot.

The station’s lawyer, Eric Miller, countered that if the news media were turned into “an investigative arm of the state,” people would become less willing to talk to reporters either on a confidential or nonconfidential basis. The result, he said, would be damage to the media’s historic role of gathering important information and conveying it to the public.

Simpson said Friday, “I think the court came up with the right decision. … The reporter has the same obligation as any other citizen to be a witness if they observe a crime taking place.”

Marselis Parsons, news director at WCAX, said, “It’s a sad day. I’m dismayed by the court’s decision. We knew that it was an uphill fight.”

He said he very much doubted that police would find more evidence of crimes on the unaired tapes. “We showed the videotape that was the most dramatic. We didn’t conceal any crime. We have no interest in shielding a bunch of stupid UVM kids who are out of control.”

He said the result of the ruling was “that we will surrender the tape today.” He said the station’s lawyer, Miller, “has had a tape of the outtakes all along, which he will now make available to the prosecutor.”

Parsons added that the station would review its policy of keeping unaired videotape for possible future broadcast, noting that some stations destroy outtakes immediately after they are edited out of material that is aired.

“I don’t know that we will change our policy, but you can bet we will sure as heck review that policy,” he said.

The prosecutor took a dim view of any such change. “I would say that you are champions of the public’s right to know and if you engage in a systematic process of destroying evidence, then you’re not doing what you’re claiming you’re all about,” Simpson said. “I can’t imagine they would do that.”

The high court’s ruling reversed a decision by Chittenden County Superior Court Judge Linda Leavitt, who ruled that police investigating the riot had not exhausted all other avenues of inquiry before demanding to see the station’s outtakes.

In its ruling, written by Associate Justice Denise Johnson, the Supreme Court said, “While the press has the right to withhold whatever information from publication that it chooses, the exercise of that right does not grant the press a First Amendment “exemption’ from the ordinary duty of all citizens to furnish relevant information to a grand jury.”

AP-ES-08-26-05 1300EDT