Source: http://scopareview.com/category/civil/right-to-know/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 23:56:37+00:00

Document:
Right to Know (RTK) requests by several defense attorneys in Centre County (home of Mount Nittany) revealed communications between DA Stacy Parks Miller and judges on CCP and MDC, which the defense attorneys used to demonstrate ex parte communications in various cases. The County handed over all documents requested without consulting with Parks Miller or the judicial staffs. Parks Miller sued for an injunction prohibiting future disclosures on the basis that she is not subject to the general disclosure requirements of the Right to Know Law (RTKL) because she is part of a “judicial agency” as defined in the statute.
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania ruled in Miller v. County of Centre that DAs are not “judicial agencies” for purposes of the RTKL, and are subject to the general disclosure of requested documents unless they can show another valid privilege or exemption.
Justice Wecht, writing for the 5 members of the unanimous Court, says that an “examination of the RTKL, the definitional section of the Judicial Code, 42 Pa.C.S. § 102, and the definitions provided in our Rules of Judicial Administration, demonstrate that a district attorney’s office is not a ‘judicial agency’ for purposes of the RTKL,” and thus, is subject to the general disclosure rules of the statute.
Determining how the DAs of Pennsylvania are classified is a crucial step in the fight over disclosure of their records. This is because there is a presumption that “All records in the possession of Commonwealth and local agencies are presumed to be public records subject to disclosure” unless a specific exemption, privilege or statute can be shown to exempt them. The common law right to access public documents that precedes Pennsylvania’s first RTK statute. The public policy of Pennsylvania strongly supports disclosure of government documents upon request of private parties.
However, this broad duty to disclose does not apply to “judicial agencies” under the RTKL. The DA’s argument “relies entirely upon the facially curious inclusion of district attorneys within the definition of ‘system and related personnel’ set forth in the Judicial Code and the Rules of Judicial Administration.” But a quick review of the Judicial Code and the RTKL reveals that DAs are defined as “related staff,” and not “personnel of the system.” Thus, they are not shielded as “judicial agencies” under the RTKL.
This reading is consistent with the objective of the RTKL, which “‘is to empower citizens by affording them access to information concerning the activities of their government,’ to promote openness to official government information in order to prohibit secrets, scrutinize the actions of public officials, and to make public officials accountable for their actions.” The RTKL and its predecessor, RTKA were designed to increase accountability for unelected agencies, and to ensure the public’s right to access information remains unfettered by red tape.
Perhaps I’m just amped up from reading about judges being dismissed over ex parte communications, but I’m extremely curious to know more about the underlying facts in this case. The Court makes no comment on the scandalous allegations—and perhaps because they’re either pending as formal charges, or because the charges went nowhere already—but I can’t contain my own curiosity as to the nature of these communications and the results of them.
Our Supreme Court continues to chart a bold and broad reading of the RTK’s disclosure requirements—consistent, I believe, with the text and purpose of the RTKL. In PSP v. Grove, decided earlier this year, the Court did not shy away from making the State Police offer up their motor vehicle recordings in a broad ruling; now the Court makes clear that DAs are required to give up information upon request, as well.
In Pennsylvania State Police v. Grove, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania rules that Motor Vehicle Recordings are not exempt from the disclosure requirements of the Right to Know Act, and that they could not be withheld under the Wiretap Statute or CHRIA.
Motor Vehicle Recordings (MVRs) are recordings made by a police car’s dashboard camera, typically when the lights and siren are activated. Michelle Grove, a concerned private citizen, requested MVRs that captured investigation in the aftermath of an accident that she had observed. The record is “not clear” as to Grove’s motivation for trying to obtain the records of the accident, but she apparently became curious or concerned about the nature of the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP)’s investigation at the scene of a traffic accident where minor traffic citations were issued.
The Right to Know (RTK) Act broadly requires Commonwealth agencies to disclose various documents within their possession at the request of a citizen. 65 P.S. § 67.301. Exceptions to this broad duty of disclosure exist, of course, and two such exceptions are for “audio recordings, telephone or radio transmissions received by emergency dispatch personnel, including 911 recordings,” Section 708(b)(18)(i), and “criminal investigative records” under Section 708(b)(16). PSP denied Grove’s RTK requests, citing these exceptions, as well as the Criminal History Record Information Act (CHRIA).
Justice Kevin Dougherty, writing for the 5-2 majority, holds that MVRs are public records and therefore generally subject to disclosure under RTK requests. Exceptions should be construed narrowly to effectuate the general intent of the statute, “which is to empower citizens by affording them access to information concerning the activities of their government.” (quoting SWB Yankees LLC v. Wintermantel, 615 Pa. 640 (2012)). Any exception, including the exception for investigative materials, must be determined on a case-by-case basis.
The burden is on the Commonwealth agency to justify non-disclosure by a preponderance of the evidence. PSP’s position that MVRs are “generally exempt” would impermissibly shift this burden to the requestor to show that PSP would not be burdened. The legislature’s intent to keep RTK a broad power is underscored by the legislature’s recent expansions of RTK, and PSP, like other Commonwealth agencies, must comply.
In the present case, “The video depiction presents nothing more than what a bystander would observe.” The videos did not reveal the accident as it unfolded, and “the fact and nature of the Vehicle Code violations could not have been garnered from the video-only aspect of the MVRs.” Indeed, PSP conceded that “the only potentially investigative information consisted of the verbal statements captured on Trooper Thomas’s MVR,” which were ordered redacted by the Commonwealth Court, which neither party argued to overturn at SCOPA.
But PSP had one more argument up their sleeve in the case—RTK does not require an agency to create a “new record.” In other words, if in order to comply with an RTK request, an agency would have to redact documents so heavily as to actually compile an entirely new record, the agency can deny the request on the basis that it requires them to create something rather than disclose a document they already have. The majority wastes no time rejecting this argument in this case. All that was required here was the redaction of some audio from the MVRs—a task easily accomplished without great expenditures of labor on behalf of PSP.
The Court goes on to hold that the Wiretap Statute is not violated by the capture of oral conversations in which no privacy interest reasonably existed. The conversations were made with no expectation of privacy to investigating officers at the scene of an accident. The conversations were in public, overheard by other bystanders (including Grove), and any sensitive portions had already been agreed to be redacted from the audio. Therefore, the Wiretap Statute is not violated.
Justice Wecht concurs in the result, but writes separately to argue that the Court should re-examine our interpretation of the Wiretap Statute in a future case. The Court’s jurisprudence in the past has impermissibly collapsed statutory and constitutional analysis into a singular consideration. An individual’s “privacy interest” in the content of the conversation in question, in other words, should not be relevant in determining whether capturing someone’s conversation was prohibited by the Wiretap Statute. Nonetheless, the precedents are good law at the moment, and were correctly applied to this case.
This case strikes me as the most important of the term. Yes, other cases have received more hype, but Grove will be remembered and cited to obtain access to surveillance video, MVRs, and most crucially, body-camera footage from officers. These videos have already had a profound impact on the public’s understanding of police work, and have shown horrifying images in cases such as the Philando Castile slaying by an officer in Minnesota. RTK requests will proliferate, and as this case makes clear, the requestor need not have a personal or obvious interest in the matter, they need only be a concerned citizen.
This case should be read in conjunction with the 3rd Circuit case, Fields v. City of Philadelphia, which held that citizens have a First Amendment right to record police actions, even when they don’t yet know if they’re going to use the video or post it anywhere. As technology changes, the citizen’s right to access the substantial recordings made of their own daily activities by police and other agencies is leading to growing concern that our privacy is under assault. In this case, as well as in Fields, the courts are ruling that the people have the power to turn government surveillance power into a government liability. They more they record, the more we potentially have access to.

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