Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice decries ruling against media seeking police files

The Alabama Supreme Court on Friday ruled against a Mobile media outlet seeking law enforcement files related to a fatal police shooting, sparking a fervent dissent from the court's own chief justice regarding the state's public records law. 

The court upheld a Baldwin County ruling in the case, in which Lagniappe Mobile sued for investigative records from the Baldwin County Sheriff’s Office related to the 2017 shooting of motorist Jonathan Victor. The high court ruled the records Lagniappe sought, including dash and body camera footage from the shooting, are all exempted from open records law due to their "investigative" nature, even though the investigation in the shooting has been closed. 

Chief Justice Tom Parker decried the ruling in a scathing dissent, writing he could not "sit idly by" as the court "shrinks a legal right of the people of Alabama to the vanishing point."

“With one sweeping stroke, today’s decision spells the end of public access to law-enforcement records that are connected in any way to an investigation," Parker wrote. "... After today, as to law enforcement agencies at least, the statute might as well be titled the Closed Records Act.”

Ashley Trice, co-publisher and editor at the Lagniappe Weekly, said the outlet is weighing its next steps. The ruling was disappointing, though not entirely surprising, Trice said, given Alabama's anemic and poorly written public records law. 

"It's given law enforcement, any governmental agency, the ability to operate in complete and total darkness," Trice said. "I do agree in the justices in their assessment that the statute is poorly written. It definitely is. That doesn't give every law enforcement agency cover to pick and choose what they want to hand over to journalists and the citizens of Alabama. This is terrible for all of us, not just this newspaper."

Lagniappe filed suit following the May 2015 shooting of Jonathan Victor by a county sheriff's deputy. Victor, a 35-year-old from Louisiana, was involved in a single-vehicle crash when first responders reported he was acting "erratically," according to Lagniappe reporting. Cpl. Matt Hunady repeatedly ordered Victor to drop something he held in his hands, shooting Victor four times after he said the man failed to respond to the order. Lagniappe reports Victor held a fanny pack in his hands, wrapped in a jacket. Reporters later obtained on-scene footage through a separate lawsuit, filed by Victor's family. 

"We wanted the body cam footage. We all pay tax dollars, and how many millions of dollars have been spent on body cameras for our police to add transparency? We asked them to be transparent. They refused," Trice said.

The Alabama Press Association, of which The Montgomery Advertiser is a member, decried the ruling in a Friday statement.

"Today the Alabama Supreme Court issued a ruling that will greatly curtail efforts to hold law enforcement accountable through open record requests," said Alabama Press Association General Counsel J. Evans Bailey. "The Court’s decision in Something Extra Publishing v. Mack, et al. has put photographs, videos, documents, 911 calls, autopsy records, and correspondence related to any criminal investigation behind a shroud of secrecy based on an expansive reading of the investigative privilege statute. The opinion appears to say these records are to be hidden from the public regardless of the source or whether the investigation is concluded."

An attempt to strengthen Alabama's records law, one of the weakest in the nation, failed in the Legislature last year. Currently, public institutions do not have to respond to records requests from citizens or journalists, and can charge exorbitant fees for producing documents. The only way to force an agency to respond and produce records is through a lawsuit, which Trice said Friday many smaller media outlets cannot afford to do.

Contact Montgomery Advertiser reporter Melissa Brown at 334-240-0132 or mabrown@gannett.com.