Victims’ Rights Laws Abused Again To Hide Identities Of Officers Who Killed Someone

Legal Issues

from the one-of-the-few-laws-cops-actually-know-back-to-front dept

Ten states are currently home to a version of California’s “Marsy’s Law.” This law is a “victim’s rights” law, named after a California murder victim. It was written with the intent of involving crime victims in the criminal justice process, giving them a “right” to be heard during court proceedings, choose their own representation (rather than be solely represented by the prosecution), and — as is most relevant here — prevent crime victims’ names from being released publicly.

That’s where these laws have become convenient for cops. When cops deploy excessive force (including killing people), the person subjected to police violence is often hit with criminal charges. Resisting arrest is a popular one. So is “assaulting an officer,” which may mean nothing more than a person bumped into an officer while being detained. Since those are criminal charges, the cops turn themselves into victims, despite having performed far more violence than the person they restrained (to death, in some cases).

States where victim rights laws are in force allow officers to prevent their names from being published by media covering deadly force incidents. Since the cops are nominal “victims,” the law applies to them. A law enforcement officer in South Dakota used the state’s law to keep their name out of the papers following their shooting of driver during a traffic stop.

The same thing happened in Florida a few years later. Two cops who deployed deadly force were able to convince a judge the state’s Marsy’s Law applied to them — even superseding the public’s right to this information through the state’s public records laws.

It has happened again. Same state, same law, same outcome. Here’s Scott Shackford for Reason:

In Sarasota County, three deputies were sent to a condo in April to help evict 52-year-old Jeremiah Evans. According to Sarasota County Sheriff Department’s report, Evans pulled out a knife and threatened the deputies. One of the deputies shot and killed Evans.

Prosecutors determined that the shooting was justified. The Sarasota Herald-Tribune submitted a public records request to the State Attorney’s Office, and among the information they received were the unredacted last names of the deputies involved.

Then the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office swung into action, going to a judge to invoke Marsy’s Law to try to prohibit the newspaper from publishing the names of the officers involved. On Friday evening a judge granted a temporary injunction preemptively prohibiting the newspaper from publishing the officers’ names. Despite failing to redact the names by accident, the State Attorney’s Office also supported the sheriff’s department and joined the action against the newspaper, essentially attempting to shift responsibility onto the newspaper for the office’s own supposed breach of the law.

The Herald-Tribune, which had already obtained some of this information (last names only) from the state attorney’s office, is rightfully upset at this turn of events. It has filed a motion in opposition to this injunction — one secured by both the Sheriff’s Office and the state attorney — pointing out that this is an unjustified abuse of the victim’s rights law in hopes of memory-holing information already provided to the paper.

In the newspaper’s motion, attorneys said nothing in Marsy’s law creates a private right of action against third parties or empowers courts to “censor private persons, such as respondents.” If disclosure of the deputies’ names violated Marsy’s Law, the motion argues, the violator was the State Attorney’s Office, not the newspaper. 

“Petitioners cite no case law that places Marsy’s Law above the free-speech guarantee in Article I, Section 4 of the Florida Constitution. And any reading of Marsy’s Law that prohibits the news media from publishing publicly disclosed information also would bring Marsy’s Law into conflict with the United States Constitution,” the motion states.

First and foremost, the law cannot be used to stuff the genie back into the bottle. The newspaper already has access to the involved officers’ last names, thanks to a public records response by the state attorney’s office. The emergency injunction does not prevent the paper from publishing information it already has because the public release, as the paper points out, was performed by the state attorney.

Second, the injunction process appears to have abandoned the concept of due process entirely. It was obtained by the sheriff and state attorney with zero opportunity for input from the party directly affected by the injunction. The paper was not notified the injunction was being sought and was not informed of law enforcement’s efforts until after the order was secured. And it was obtained on Friday evening at 6:30 pm, presumably to maximize the length of the questionably obtained opacity, preventing the paper from engaging in any challenge of the order until the following Monday.

This certainly isn’t the way those writing these laws expected them to be used. But that’s what these laws enable when they’re abused by public employees who deploy deadly force: a larger gap between state law enforcement officers and the already distant accountability that rarely serves to deter future misconduct.

Filed Under: cops, florida, marsy's law, sarasota, victim's rights