The Kansas Justice Institute has filed an amicus curiae (friend of the court) brief supporting the Linn County News in a case seeking to find a new Kansas law an unconstitutional infringement of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. The law requires the sealing of certain court documents.
The case preceding the constitutional question involved the death of a Linn County teenager in a dog attack last December. The dog’s owner transported the body of the deceased youth to Bates County, Missouri where he disposed of it in a ravine. Soon after, he contacted Bates County authorities, led them to the body, and was arrested on several counts, including second-degree murder and desecration of a body. He was found guilty recently and is serving four years in prison.
The Kansas Statute in question is K.S.A. § 60-2617(a), which reads, in part:
(1) Upon filing of a criminal case or a case pursuant to the revised Kansas juvenile justice code in which an arrest warrant is being sought, the case shall be sealed by the court until such warrant has been executed or the request for such warrant is denied.
(2) All subpoenas issued in a criminal case or a case pursuant to the revised Kansas juvenile justice code shall be sealed by the court and a subpoena shall only be unsealed if the court makes a finding that unsealing such subpoena is in the interest of justice.
(3) The provisions of this subsection shall apply retroactively to any case or warrant information or subpoenas that are currently pending.
In its brief, the Kansas Justice Institute argues:
From Richmond Newspapers through Press Enterprise II, the United States Supreme Court has announced and reiterated that courtrooms must remain open to the public. The First Amendment’s freedoms require, demand, and provide for openness, transparency, and accountability—all necessary components of a well-functioning criminal justice system. As a district court explained in a closely analogous case, the right to access judicial records “serves to promote trustworthiness of the judicial process, to curb judicial abuses, and to provide the public with a more complete understanding of the judicial system, including a better perception of fairness. For criminal cases, public access plays a particularly significant role in the functioning of the judicial process and inures to the benefit of both the defendant and society as a whole.
Public access to court records, which includes the documents charging Mr. Leonard with crimes, permits a well-informed public discussion about this, and other widely covered matters. As the Smith Court explained, the “historic tradition of public access to the charging document in a criminal case reflects the importance of its role in the criminal trial process and the public’s interest in knowing its contents. It sets forth the charge or charges to be tried” and “establishes the general parameters of the government’s case. Knowledge of the charge or charges is essential to an understanding of the trial, essential to an evaluation of the performance of counsel and the court, and, most importantly, essential to an appraisal of the fairness of the criminal process to the accused.
Sam MacRoberts, Litigation Director at Kansas Justice Institute, summarizes the essential argument in Walker Publishing, Inc., d/b/a Linn County v Doug Shima, et al.:
“Kansas’s automatic-sealing statute violates the First Amendment. For more than forty years, the United States Supreme Court has declared that courtrooms must remain open to the public. Automatically sealing court documents, irrespective of the facts, violates the First Amendment.”
The Sentinel and Kansas Justice Institute are subsidiaries of Kansas Policy Institute.
