Editorial: No one learns when secrets are kept
By definition, autopsies are unpleasant. They take place after someone has died because of a homicide, suicide or accident, or because the cause of their death was uncertain or perhaps suspicious.
Unpleasant as they may be, there’s good reason autopsies are required by law in such instances and that they be performed by a public agency. Their findings carry grave weight. They provide solemn answers to grieving loved ones, can confirm or dispel suspicions about the causes and circumstances of a death, and can shed light on how fatal tragedies unfolded.
They also serve a public purpose, as their findings can help to hold public agencies accountable for their actions and also inform government policies to protect public health and safety.
For all these reasons, the autopsy reports prepared by county medical examiners are appropriately public records. Thanks to a California Supreme Court ruling late last month upholding a unanimous opinion from the 2nd District Court of Appeal, these records will remain so.
It shouldn’t have taken years of litigation to reach that conclusion.
The lawsuit was initiated by three media organizations, including The Star. Ventura County initially withheld the autopsy reports on 11 of the 13 deaths in the horrendous mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks on Nov. 7, 2018 for investigatory reasons and did not oppose the families when they sued to stop the release.
The county supported the request of family members of the deceased, who asserted that making public these reports would violate their privacy.
While sympathy for those concerns is understandable, there have always been and remain ample legal protections that address such concerns. It is against the law to release photographs of dead bodies, and the law allows coroners to redact any portions of autopsy reports that they believe serve no public purpose and needlessly reveal details of a victim’s personal life.
In its opinion handed down in June, the appeals court wrote that privacy rights may properly factor into decisions to withhold specific information — but that they “do not nullify” the right of public access to public documents that is enshrined in the state Constitution.
It should also be noted that in some instances, the sentiment for release of autopsy reports in mass shootings is most deeply felt by the family members of victims. In Uvalde, Texas, after a judge sealed the reports from the horrific school shooting there that claimed the lives of 19 children, family members decried the lack of transparency.
In the nearly five years since the Borderline mass shooting, we have witnessed again and again the importance of learning from it whatever lessons might be gleaned. Just this year, just in Southern California, the same horror has unfolded at other entertainment venues — a ballroom studio in Monterey Park and a rustic bar in Orange County.
In the grim likelihood that we haven’t seen the last of this madness, anything that can be learned from such tragedies to help law enforcement agencies train and prepare might help save lives. No one learns when potentially useful information is kept secret.
That’s why the California Public Records Act exists — to hold public agencies accountable and to ensure public access to information. It proclaims that information gathered in the conduct of public business “is a fundamental and necessary right of the public.”
That’s true even when the information is unpleasant, and especially when it concerns an event that shook and saddened the entire community.
The California Supreme Court got this right.
This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: Editorial: No one learns when secrets are kept
