Filed 3/12/14 CERTIFIED FOR PUBLICATION COURT OF APPEAL, FOURTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

DIVISION ONE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA

LA TWON REGINAL WEAVER, Petitioner,

v. THE SUPERIOR COURT OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Respondent; D063768 (San Diego County Su per. Ct. No. 37

– 2013

– 00032402

– CU

– WM

– CTL)

THE DISTRICT ATTORNEY ' S OFFICE OF SAN DIEGO COUNTY et al. , Real Part ies in Interest.
PROCEEDINGS in mandate after the superior court denied a request for public records , Rich ard E. L. Strauss, Judge. Petition granted

.

James S. Thomson, Elisabeth Semel, Ty Alper, for the Petitioner. Thomas E. Montgomery, County Counsel, Deborah A. McCarthy, Assistant County Counsel, Claudia Anzures, C. Ellen Pilsecker, George W. Brewste r, Jr. , Chief2

Deputy Attorneys, William A llen Johnson, Jr. , Senior Deputy Attorney for Real Parties in
Interest. BACKGROUND In this writ proceeding, p etitioner La Twon Reginal Weaver, who is a prisoner sentenced to death, seeks various records from the D istrict Attorney ' s Office of San Diego County (District Attorney) under the California Public Records Act (CPRA; Gov.
Code , 1 § 6250 et seq.) to assist in investigat ing whether th e District Attorney impermissibly sought the death penalty based on the race o f the defendant, the victim, or both.
In January 2013, as relevant here, Weaver requested the Di strict A ttorney provide him with (1) copies of all charging documents in homicide cases filed by th e District Attorney between January 197 7 and May 1993 and (2 ) all court filings in superior court

cases People v. Tro i a ni , et al. (Super. Ct. S.D. County, No. CRN9925 ) and People v. Moffett (Super. Ct. S.D. County, No. CR103094) ad d ress ing allegations the District Attorney selecti vely prosecuted capital cases

. Th e D istrict A ttorney denied Weaver ' s requests on grounds that under the CPRA, the documents sought were exempt as investigat ory files (§ 6254, subd. (f)); and prohibited from disclosure under a different state or federal law (§ 6254, subd. (k)). The
Distri ct Attorney further argu ed the documents sought implicate the privacy rights of

" hundreds of defendants and victims under article I, sections 1 and 28, of the California

1 All s tatutory references are to the Government Code unless otherwise stated.3

[C] onstitution. " The District Attorney also objected that Weaver ' s request for the li st of homicide cases was overly burdensome because " programming and extraction of the data
necessary to identify the records would require approximately 35

- 40 hours of time at a cost of $85 per hour for a total of approximately $3,400. " The District Attor ney noted
Weaver ' s request was duplicative of one he had made in postconvict ion discovery under
Penal Code section 1054.9. 2
Weaver filed a writ petition in superior court seeking to compel the District Attorney to produc e the documents. The superior co urt denied the petition , adopting the District Attorney ' s position set forth above , except that the court did not rule on the issue of the request ' s burdensomeness

. We issued an order to show cause. The District Attorney filed an unverified
return, to w hich Weaver repl i ed.
DISCUSSION
In response to our request for supplemental briefing , and also at oral argument, the District Attorney acknowledged that the documents Weaver seeks are the District Attorney ' s file copies of "court documents " whose originals were filed in the superior court. ( The Copley Press, Inc. v. Superior Court ( 1992 ) 6 Cal.App.4th 106 [defining

2 We deny the District Attorney's request for judicial notice of Weaver's discovery request filed in his postconviction motion because that document is immaterial to our disposition o f this case. Under the CPRA, there are "no limitations on access to a public record based upon the purpose for which the record is being requested, if the record is otherwise subject to disclosure." (§ 6257.5.) Generally, "unless exempted, all public re cords may be examined by any member of the public, often the press, but conceivably any person with no greater interest than idle curiosity." ( Marylander v. Superior Court (2000) 81 Cal.App.4th 1119, 1125.)4

"court documents" to include "the various documents filed in or received by the court, such as pleadings and motions filed by the parties and t he evidence admitted in court proceedings. All of these documents represent and reflect the official work of the court, in which the public and press have a justifiable interest."]

. ) The issue we decide is whether the District Attorney ' s copies of judici al documents

— which must be made available to the public upon request at th e superior court

— are entitled to exemption from disclosure as investigatory documents under the C PRA or because they implicate privacy rights

. We conclude the documents sought are n ot exempt from disclosure

. As the California Supreme Court has stated : "We consider it unlikely the Legislature intended to render documents confidential based on their location." ( Commission on Peace Officer Standards & Training v. Superior Court (2007 ) 42 Cal.4th 278, 291 [quoting Williams v. Superior Court (1993) 5 Cal.4th 337, 355 for the proposition that " the law does not provide . . . that a public agency may shield a record from public disclosure, regardless of its nature, simply by placing it in a file labeled 'investigatory' " ] .) The same principle applies here. "[T]he content of the document at issue, not the location in which it is stored, [is] determinative." ( Commission on Peace Officer Standards & Training v. Superior Court

, at p. 291.) In enacting the CPRA, the Legislature sought to provide the public broad access to
documents re garding how government agencies carry out their responsibilities

.

" Endorsing the proposition ' that access to information concerning the conduct of the people ' s business is a fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state '5

(§ 6250), the Legislature enacted the [C PRA ] ' for the purpose of increasing freedom of information by giving members of the public access to information in the possession of pub lic agencies. ' [Citation.] Legislative policy favors disclosure. [Citation.] ' All public records are subject to disclosure unless the [CPRA] expressly provides otherwise. ' " ( American Civil Liberties Union of Northern Cal. v. Superior Court (2011) 202 Cal.App.4th 55, 67.) " Since disclosure is favored, all exemptions are narrowly construed. [Citation.] The agency opposing disclosure bears the burden of proving that an exemption applies. " ( County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court (2009) 170 Cal.App.4th
1301 , 1321 .)
A s a matter of due process, the District Attorney i s required to fil e a complaint in each criminal case to invoke the court ' s jurisdiction. ( City of San Diego v. Municipal
Court (1980) 102 Cal.App.3d 775, 778; Pen. Code, §§ 737 [ " All felonie s shall be prosecuted by indictment or information, except as provided in [Penal Code] Section 859a

. " ] ; 738 [ " The proceeding for a preliminary examination must be commenced by written complaint " ] ; 949 [ " The first pleading on the part of the people in the s uperior court in a felony case is the indictment, information, or the complaint in any case certified to the superior court under [Penal Code] Section 859a. The first pleading on the part of the people in a misdemeanor or infraction case is the complaint except as otherwise provided by law

. " ]. ) Because they were publicly filed , the charging documents
Wea v er seeks are not investigatory files exempt from disclosure under the CPRA

. Similarly , the documents he seeks from the Troiani and Moffett case file s we re publicly
fi led in superior court, and involve motions for disclosure of information regarding6

claim s of selective prosecution. As such, they are not investigatory files exempt from disclosure under section 6254, subd ivision (f). Again, in light of the fact the documents were publicly filed , we reject the District Attorney ' s arguments based on the California C onstitution ' s right to privacy. " [A] plaintiff alleging an invasion of privacy in violation of the state constitutional right to privacy must esta blish each of the following: (1) a legally protected privacy interest; (2) a reasonable expectation of privacy in the circumstances; and (3) conduct by defendant constituting a serious invasion of privacy. " ( Hill v. National Collegiate Athletic Assn. (199 4) 7 Cal.4th 1, 39

- 40 ; Int ernationa l Federation of Prof essional & Technical Engineers, Local 21 AFL

- CIO v . Superior Court (2007) 42 Cal.4th 319, 338.) D isclosure of the documents Weaver seeks would not violate the privacy rights of either the defendants o r victims in homicide cases

. There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in documents required to be filed in court when those documents are not filed under seal

. T he District Attorney also claims the documents sought are exempt under section 6254, subd ivision (k), which relates to " [ r ] ecords, the disclosure of which is exempted or prohibited pursuant to federal or state law. " The District Attorney claims that disclosing the documents would violate Penal Code section 1330 2, which forbid s an employee of the local criminal justice agency from knowingly furnishing a record or information obtained from a record to a person who is not authorized by law to receive that information. But Penal Code section 13302 has recently been modified (Stats. 2012, ch. 84, § 1) and now states : " Nothing in this section shall prohibit a public prosecutor from accessing and obtaining information from the public prosecutor ' s case management7

database to respond to a request for publicly disclosable information pursuant to the
Ca lifornia Public Records Act. " Therefore, the District Attorney ' s argument is unavailing.
T he District Attorney also object s that Weaver ' s requ est i s burdensome under section 625 5 , subdivision (a) , which states , " The agency shall justify withholding any

re cord by demonstrating that the record in question is exempt under express provisions of this chapter or that on the facts of the particular case the public interest served by not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclos ure of the record. " As stated, t he superior court did not rule on this objection.
T he only evidence the District Attorney presented regarding the purported burdensomeness of Weaver ' s request was its estimate that for it to generate a list of homicide case s filed in San Diego County between 1977 and 1993, one of its employee s would have to work a 40

- hour week at a cost of approximately $3 , 400

. Our review of the District Attorney ' s objection t o the request as burdensome is by necessity limited to this evid ence. ( Campbell v. Superior Court (2008) 159 Cal.App.4th 635, 647.) We conclude the public ' s interes t in the fair administration of the death penalty is a longstand ing concern in California, and it is inconceivable to us that any countervailing interest t hat the District Attorney c ould assert outweighs the magnitude of the public ' s interest. (Accord , American Civil Liberties Union of Northern Cal ifornia v. Superior
Cour t (2011) 202 Cal.App. 4 th 55, 71 [ " We agree that ' [f]ew issues in American society have generated as much impassioned debate as the death penalty. At one end of the spectrum, abolitionists condemn the intentional taking of human life by the State as8

barbaric and profoundly immoral. At the other, proponents see death, even a painful death, a s the only just punishment for crimes that inflict unimaginable suffering on victims and their surviving loved ones. Even among those with less absolute positions, there are vigorous arguments about the social, penological, and economic costs and benefits of capital punishment. ' " ]

. ) Moreover, we agree that: " Beyond the state of the evidence in this particular record, there are other reasons to accord little weight to the financial concerns. As has been said, ' There is nothing in the [CPRA] to suggest th at a records request must impose

no burden to the government agency. ' [Citations.] Thus, for example, the $43,000 cost of compiling an a c curate list of names was not a ' valid reason to proscribe disclosure of the identity of such individuals

. ' " ( County of Santa Clara v. Superior Court (20 09) 170 Cal.App.4th 1301, 1327, q uoting CBS Broadcasting, Inc. v. Superior Court (2001) 91 Cal.App.4th 892, 909 ] .) The approximately $3 , 400 expense of generating the list of cases at issue here is substantially less of a reason and pales in comparison to the interests of Weaver and the public in disclosure.9 DISPOSITION Let a writ issue directing the superior court to vacate the order dated March 26, 2013, and enter an order granting La Twon W eaver ' s petition. Costs to La Twon Weaver

. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.493 (a)(1)(A ) .) The opinion will be final as to this court 15 days after filing. (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 8.490 (b)( 2 ) (A) .)

O ' ROURKE, J.
WE CONCUR:
McINTYRE, Acting P. J.

IRION, J.