In Williams v. NBC Universal Media LLC, No. 25-mc-00122 (LJL) (S.D.N.Y. Aug. 25, 2025), New York District Judge Lewis J. Liman granted in part movant’s motion to compel compliance with a subpoena issued to NBC Universal Media, LLC (NBCU) related to its popular Dateline TV program, ordering NBCU to produce all unedited Dateline outtakes of its interview with Kimberly Williams, the petitioner’s ex-wife and co-defendant. He denied the motion to compel footage of eight other individuals, finding Williams’s arguments for the relevance of these interviews were speculative and constituted an impermissible “fishing expedition” into journalistic files.

Case Discussion and Judge’s Ruling

Eric Lyle Williams, an inmate on death row in Texas, was convicted in Texas state court of capital murder of Cynthia McLelland (the wife of Michael McLelland, the District Attorney of Kaufman County, Texas, who was also killed as well as Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse a few months earlier) and sentenced to death. After receiving the death penalty for Cynthia McLelland’s murder, the state did not try him for the other two killings. Williams’s direct appeals and state habeas petitions were denied.

On September 15, 2021, Williams filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, raising thirteen claims related to various alleged due process and Brady violations, ineffective assistance from counsel, and more. In Claim Nine, Williams claimed “The State violated Williams’s due process rights under Brady by failing to disclose material impeachment evidence pertaining to a key state penalty phase witness.” The witness at issue in the Brady violation alleged in Claim Nine is Williams’s ex-wife and co-defendant, Kim Williams.

Dateline broadcast two episodes related to the murders – one on February 27, 2015 and another one on June 9, 2023 (titled “Bad Intentions”). The episodes were largely the same, except the latter episode featured an interview with Kim Williams in prison, where she made comments that differed from her testimony.

After the Northern District of Texas granted Williams’s request for discovery over the opposition of the State, Williams issued a subpoena to NBCU seeking “[a]ll footage of interviews recorded in the production of” the two Dateline episodes, “including those that were not included in the final episode, complete and unedited, and any existing transcripts of those interviews, including but not limited to interviews with” 16 individuals who appeared on camera in the two aired episodes (later reduced to 9 by Williams in this motion). NBCU objected, relying in part on the ‘journalists’ privilege.

Citing Gonzales v. Nat’l Broad. Co., Judge Limon affirmed the controlling standard for compelling non-confidential journalistic materials. The party seeking discovery must demonstrate that the materials are:

1. Of likely relevance to a significant issue in the case, and
2. Not reasonably obtainable from other available sources.

Judge Limon emphasized that the privilege exists to protect the press from becoming an investigative arm of litigants and to prevent “fishing expeditions” into journalistic files. Judge Limon also rejected Williams’ argument the Dateline episodes were for entertainment rather than novel investigative journalism, stating that the privilege is not limited to “hard-hitting investigative pieces.” What matters is the intent to gather and disseminate information to the public, regardless of the medium or its entertainment value. Judge Limons cited Winters v. New York, stating: “The line between the informing and the entertaining is too elusive for the protection of that basic right.”

Judge Limon concluded that the unaired portions of the Kimberly Williams interview were “likely relevant” to the “significant issue” of whether the state withheld impeachment evidence (Claim Nine). This conclusion was not based on speculation but on reasonable inferences drawn from the aired content itself.

• Contradicted Testimony: The aired interview contained direct contradictions of her sworn penalty-phase testimony, particularly regarding a “celebratory” steak cookout after the murders. She claimed on Dateline this was “taken out of context” and part of a pre-planned family Easter tradition, not a celebration.
• Emotional State: She testified at trial that the mood was “happy, joyous,” but told Dateline that while Eric Williams was happy, she “was so sick” and “didn’t eat that weekend.”
• Prosecutorial Coaching: She stated that prosecutors “told me not to cry” on the stand.
• Impaired Mental State: She described her mind as “very cloudy” at the time of the events due to heavy drug use, stating, “I was pretty much a zombie.”

Judge Limon reasoned that the editing of the episode (which cut off logical follow-up questions) made it substantially more than conjecture that the Dateline outtakes would contain further exposition on these discrepancies, potentially revealing whether the state knew her testimony was misleading. Such information would be directly material to Williams’s Brady claim.

In contrast, Judge Limon found Williams’s arguments for the relevance of the other eight interviews to be “the very definition of a ‘fishing expedition.’“

Having established the likely relevance of only the Kimberly Williams Dateline outtakes, Judge Limon analyzed whether that information was reasonably obtainable elsewhere. While acknowledging that the “most obvious alternative” is to depose the interviewee, the court found that this was not a reasonable option in this unique case, given the extraordinary pressure of a deposition where the condemned would confront his former wife and the fact that Kimberly Williams would be entitled to invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination if questioned about lying under oath regarding a deal with the state.

Judge Limon flatly rejected NBCU’s argument that producing the Dateline outtakes posed an undue burden. NBCU estimated a minimum of 30 hours of labor to review and produce the 12.4 hours of raw footage for all nine interviews. Judge Limon was “not moved by a burden of thirty hours,” let alone the smaller fraction needed for the single interview of Kimberly Williams. So, he granted movant’s motion to compel compliance with the subpoena in relation to the Dateline outtakes of the Kimberly Williams interview, while denying the motion to compel for the other eight individuals.

So, what do you think? Will this ruling lead to other criminal defendants issuing subpoenas to news programs like Dateline for their outtakes? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Hat tip to David Horrigan for his coverage of this case in the Judicial Panel at Relativity Fest!

Case opinion link courtesy of Minerva26, an Affinity partner of eDiscovery Today.

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