In 1973, the Texas Legislature made "misuse of official information" a misdemeanor. The law, part of a chapter dealing with "abuse of office," applied to "a public servant" who "acquires or aids another to acquire a pecuniary interest in any property, transaction, or enterprise that may be affected by" information that "has not been made public" but to which "he has access in his official capacity." The statute also covered "a public servant" who "speculates or aids another to speculate on the basis of the information."
Forty-four years later, police and prosecutors in Laredo deployed an amended and expanded version of that anti-corruption law against Priscilla Villarreal, a local journalist whose freewheeling news coverage and criticism of law enforcement officials had irked them. By asking police questions about a public suicide and a fatal car crash for stories on her locally popular Facebook page, they claimed, she had committed felonies punishable by two to 10 years in prison.
