So I wasn't surprised when the Aiken prosecutor accused The Augusta Chronicle of interfering with the justice system by printing a story based on a letter we received from Robert Atkins, who likely will be charged with murdering 17-year-old Jessica Carpenter two years ago.

In his letter, Mr. Atkins didn't confess to the killing, but he asked for forgiveness from Miss Carpenter's family and said he would ask for the death penalty.

Second Circuit Solicitor Barbara R. Morgan asked me not to print that story, saying it would make it more difficult to win a conviction in the case and would guarantee a change of venue for the trial. After a great deal of discussion and debate within the newspaper, and after consulting legal experts, we printed the story this week.

Why did we do that? Do we print whatever we want with no regard for consequences? Aren't we concerned that we could be setting a killer free?

We are very concerned about what happens after we publish a story. We know the newspaper is a convenient target when people are looking for something to blame during a difficult situation. We often print things that bother people. We operate out in the open, and we do things constitutional officers of the court system are forbidden to do.

We would never run a story we thought would interfere with the judicial process. But our role in our society is to get information that is useful to our readers, to present it to you as quickly as possible and to let you make intelligent, informed decisions.

The truth is newspaper stories don't affect the outcome of court cases. The U.S. Supreme Court has never reversed a case simply because of newspaper coverage of the facts of the crime or the statements of the defendant. Reversals occur when there is an inflammatory atmosphere within the courtroom itself.

If pretrial release of information is so harmful, why did the Aiken police hold a news conference to announce they had a suspect whose DNA matched DNA found at the crime scene? That announcement was a blockbuster, receiving much more attention from the media and from Aiken residents than did our story about the Atkins letter.

The Carpenter killing is a high-profile case. It had the community inflamed because people were worried the killer might still be in their midst. The fact that a suspect was identified after two years and that the accused killer was already in a Georgia prison on unrelated charges made the story even better because the community could feel a little safer. But people had questions, such as "Who is Robert Atkins?" and "How did he pick Jessica Carpenter?"

That's why our reporter Matthew Boedy wrote a letter to Mr. Atkins and asked him to respond to many questions. That's why Mr. Boedy wrote the story after he received the response.

Ms. Morgan complained that we were doing something she and the police were prohibited from doing. She's right. But she's an officer of the court. She represents the state, with all the power and resources of the government.

The people who wrote our Constitution and the laws governing our judicial system realized that the real danger was abuse of power by the government. The framers of the Constitution wanted to make sure citizens had access to as much information as possible, because they had lived under a system where the government controlled everything.

So they wrote the First Amendment to the Constitution, which says, in part, "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ..." That doesn't mean we can do whatever we want. The right of a free press comes into conflict with other rights most often in the balance between a free press and a fair trial.

The Sixth Amendment guarantees "the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury ..." So the question becomes "When does a free press jeopardize the right to a fair trial?" No journalist wants to interfere with a trial or harm the judicial process in any way.

But the Supreme Court has been pretty clear that there is a high threshold for news before a trial is compromised. There is no assumption that jurors must have no information about a case before the trial. If that were the case, we could never get convictions in high-profile criminal cases.

Instead, the system has confidence in the jurors and judges in criminal trials to base their decisions on the evidence presented in court. Verdicts are based on evidence and law, not on newspaper articles.