Judge’s decision follows unauthorized leak of some documents that resulted in seven officers being placed on administrative duty pending a probe into the leak.
In the first court ruling since the summer in the public records lawsuit seeking to force the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) to release the writings left behind by the March 27 Covenant School shooter, the Tennessee Court of Appeals bolstered the efforts of those seeking to keep the shooter’s writings confidential in a Thursday ruling.
The court upheld a lower court’s ruling that allowed various parties, including the families of victims, to intervene as third-party participants in the public records lawsuit filed by various individuals, media organizations, and other interested organizations.
This ruling supports the earlier decision of a lower court, made by Davidson County Chancellor I’Ashea Myles, acknowledging the sensitive nature of the documents and their potential impact.
The court specifically stated that the trial court allowed intervention using the reasoning that the church and the school had a vested interest in the case.
“The court noted that these parties sought to protect private information to which Petitioners would not normally have access inasmuch as the Church and the School were private entities,” Judge Thomas Frierson wrote in the court’s unanimous opinion.
“The court also relied upon the affidavits filed by Metro establishing that an active, ongoing criminal investigation existed regarding potential coconspirators.”
Additionally, the higher court agreed that “irreparable injury would occur if there were public access to the private information contained in the records at issue” and acknowledged the shared legal and factual questions between the parents and other parties, justifying their intervention.
Arguments in the lower court over the case’s merits, which have yet to be argued as the appeal played out, can begin as soon as the next hearing is set. Those proceedings in the lower court have been on pause since June.
Court Ruling Implications
The Appeals Court’s decision is a crucial development in the debate over public access to sensitive information and the rights of victims and affected communities in the state.
The court disagreed with one of the key arguments of the petitioners seeking access to the records, which was that the state’s public records act does not permit the intervention of third parties in related litigation because the dispute is strictly between the person seeking the records and the entity holding the records.
By Chase Smith
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