« Ind. Law - Golf cart ordinance is an issue in Lebanon, and also other communities | Main | Ind. Law - U.S. Supreme Court's decision not to hear Hosty v. Carter impacts Indiana colleges »

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Ind. Law - "Public records lawyers say Jill Behrman's death report illegally sealed "

Fox 59 News is reporting this afternoon, in a story by Kimberly King headlined "Public records lawyers say Jill Behrman's death report illegally sealed:"

While Indiana's law requires the coroner of a given county to release the cause of death after an autopsy, in Jill Behrman's case the report is sealed.

"There's no question the autopsy report, the elements of the manner and cause of death are a manner of public record," said Indianapolis Attorney Dick Cardwell. Cardwell knows Indiana's public records law inside and out. He helped write it.

Cardwell has reviewed Morgan County Superior Court Judge G. Thomas Gray's order to keep Behrman's cause of death report sealed. He says what the Judge and law enforcement authorities have done to seal the record is wrong. "When we wrote the open records law the first provision says that a court can't seal records from another branch of government that are brought to it for the purpose of sealing, period." * * *

Detectives trying to seal a death record tried a similar tactic in the case of murdered Franklin College student Kelly Eckhart in 1997. Three newspapers sued to get her autopsy, and under pressure from the law, the coroner finally released the death report.

Former Marion County prosecutor Scott Newman says detectives like to keep certain pieces of evidence a secret to verify the killer or witness is telling the truth. But Newman says police must have other details beside cause of death to prove a case.

"There will always be lots of details around how she was killed that nobody could have known who wasn't there," said Newman. "The cause of death is one thing is certainly one piece of evidence that's important and if it's possible to leave that out of public domain, you try to do that for as long as you can you can't do it forever."

The story reports that Fox 59 News first filed an open records request in 2003, and that Morgan County Superior Judge Gray sealed Behrman's death records December 9, 2003.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 2, 2006 04:56 PM
Posted to Indiana Law