If the video footage from the Tyre Nichols beating in Memphis tells us anything, it’s that we need to keep protecting the tools that allow public accountability for corruption.
Davidson County Chancellor Pat Moskal ruled that the state could not withhold consultant reports by McKinsey and Co. under a deliberative process privilege in the face of a public records request. She said the reports were a one-way communication with state officials and did not fall under a deliberative process privilege because they were not "deliberative" and did not consist of communications between high-level government officials. The ruling is a win for journalist Stephen Elliott, who began requesting the reports in 2020.
An independent investigation of the state's secret handling of lethal injection drugs shows it did not follow state protocols for testing the materials. The state should fix this and address the secrecy about lethal injection drugs going forward.
A recording of the emergency communications of the Memphis Fire Department when Elvis Presley was found dead in 1977 has emerged in a Memphis karate shop and museum. But the fire department itself claims not to have the recording, which would be a public record.
The Tennessee Court of Appeals ruled that an audio recording of a trial made by the court reporter is part of the court record and a public record subject to the state public records law. The ruling overturns a lower court decision that had upheld an East Tennessee judge's refusal to give a convicted killer the audio recording of his murder trial.
