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August 1, 2023The efforts of parents and Nashville community members to stop the release of Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale’s writings, if successful, would be an unprecedented move that could have bigger implications going forward, an open-government expert told The Post.
Tennessee’s victims’ rights statute does not give individuals a “carte blanche” to veto other laws, such as the one that allows people the right to public records, said Deborah Fisher, executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government.
“There’s nothing really to indicate that there would be this ability for victims to veto the release of otherwise public records and in, and in this case, crime records,” Fisher said Thursday.
Fisher is not a party in the ongoing litigation over whether Hale’s writings — previously described as a “manifesto” — should be released.
But she was asked by an attorney involved to provide her input on the history of the victims’ rights legislation, she said.
“In this case, the perpetrator is dead,” she went on, “but if the shooter had gone to trial, most likely the writings of the shooter would be part of the evidence in the case about motivation.”
“I don’t think that in that situation, the victims could veto those being submitted in a public trial, and I don’t think that they can veto them being released as crime evidence in a case that doesn’t go to trial because the person is dead,” added Fisher, who is also director of the John Seigenthaler Chair of Excellence in First Amendment Studies at Middle Tennessee State University.
Victims do have legally defined rights as it pertains to criminal proceedings, their exposure to an alleged perpetrator and privacy related to sexual assault and victims’ personal information.
“There are a lot of reasons not to think that there was ever any intention that there’d be an unspecified kind of veto right of victims to prevent the release of public records.”
Fisher noted TCOG is interested in the outcome of the litigation because of its potential for bigger implications.
“If the courts do conclude that victims have a veto over the release of crime records, that would create a whole new equation in Tennessee about what the public gets to know about crime or even possibly criminal trials.”
