House Majority Leader William Lamberth has filed a bill for the special session next week that would close autopsies and other reports of medical examiners in cases involving "victims of violent crime who are minors." The bill, HB 7007, seeks to make those reports and autopsies of children who are 17 and younger "not public documents."
The mass shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville has led to an extraordinary legal battle over the public records law and transparency of our criminal justice system. The school, the church that owns the school and the parents of the schoolchildren are seeking to stop the public from seeing evidence collected by police in one of the most horrific crimes in Nashville in recent memory, saying that it would be too painful and inspire more school shootings.
A judge said victim rights in the Tennessee constitution and in statute warranted review as to whether they would block access to the writings of a mass shooter and other records collected by police in their investigation. She granted permission to parents of Covenant School children to intervene in a lawsuit to pursue the claim.
The fight over the release of the Covenant School shooter's manifesto and other writings escalated Wednesday with state Sen. Todd Gardenhire, R-Chattanooga, and The Tennessean filing a public records lawsuit against Metro Nashville, and unnamed Covenant School parents filing motions to intervene in the current cases. Also, Assistant Police Chief Mike Hagar and police Lt. Brent Gibson filed declarations that police are still trying to determine if the shooter had any assistance planning the shooting or purchasing the weapons, with Gibson stating that it will take about 12 months to finish the investigation.
Tennessee Star editor Michael Patrick Leahy and his company, Star News Digital Media, Inc., filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the FBI for withholding the Covenant School shooter's manifesto under the Freedom of Information Act. The FBI denied access to the manifesto, which it received from Nashville police, saying that it and other writings by the shooter were involved in a "pending or prospective law enforcement proceeding" and that release could interfere with a law enforcement proceeding.
