Court Opinion

ID: 9762463
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 02:24:49.122962+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:34.772707
License: Public Domain

Tom Glaze, Justice, dissenting. If the majority court’s decision today does not overturn its earlier holding in City of Fayetteville v. Rose, 294 Ark. 468, 743 S.W.2d 817 (1988), it certainly has rendered the Rose holding, and the principle upon which it was based, entirely meaningless. As the majority points out, this court in Rose held that certain investigative records possessed by the Fayetteville Police Department were subject to disclosure under the FOIA because the records did not involve an “undisclosed investigation” which would render them exempt. We further said in Rose that the records did not involve an undisclosed investigation because the state and federal authorities had completed their investigation, a federal grand jury had indicted Rose for manufacturing and possessing unregistered explosive devices, and everyone knew of the law enforcement authorities’ investigation and indictment of Rose. There is little to distinguish the present case from Rose. The Rogers Police Department investigated a controlled substance crime that Mr. William Pinson purportedly committed on July 11, 1988, and on June 5, 1988, Pinson was arrested and later arraigned on September 5,1988. Pinson’s attorney, John Martin, made his FOIA request of the Rogers Police Department on September 25, 1989 — after everyone knew of the authorities’ investigation of and formal charge against Pinson. The only difference between this case and Rose is that here the prosecutor claims the police department’s file on Pinson also contains information pertaining to other individuals, who were allegedly involved with Pinson in his drug violation. The prosecutor says his investigation of these other individuals is continuing. The majority opinion recognizes that the investigation file the Rogers police have on Pinson would have been closed and therefore open for inspection for FOIA purposes, except that the file also contains information on other persons who were supposedly involved with Pinson. Because of these references to other individuals, this court categorized this otherwise closed investigation as an “ongoing” one, which is exempt from inspection under our interpretation of the FOIA. See McCambridge v. City of Little Rock, 298 Ark. 219, 766 S.W.2d 909 (1989). Of course, when the court adopts this view, it might as well hold (contrary to Rose) that all investigative records of defendants charged with crimes are exempt from FOIA inspection until those defendants are tried, convicted or acquitted. Since most any investigative file on a defendant charged with a crime will contain references to other individuals, the state need only assert that those persons remain under investigation thereby closing the defendant’s file from inspection until (or even after) his trial. If the Rose decision is to retain any semblance of meaning and viability, surely an investigative file of a formally charged and arraigned defendant should be subject to inspection after the file is sanitized of those objectionable materials concerning other legitimate, potential defendants. At the very least, I would reverse and remand this case directing the trial court to remove or excise those references to such individuals and allow the appellant to inspect the remaining materials which were determined by this court in Rose to be subject to inspection under the FOIA.