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Monday, May 29, 2006

Ind. Courts - "Court sits on porn records"

"Court sits on porn records" is part one of a two-part series by Bryan Corbin in today's Evansville Courier&Press. The focus is the Indiana Supreme Court's Administrative Rule 9, which makes personal information confidential in public court records. The provisions central to the story are reproduced here on the C&P site. From today's story:

More than a month ago, a Boonville, Ind., man who is a computer network administrator for a seminary was arrested on child-pornography charges.

But the public still can't find out the specifics of the crimes Shawn Kilgore is accused of committing. Two weeks after the Evansville Courier & Press requested information about his alleged crimes, Warrick County court officials still had not released the probable-cause affidavit - the police report justifying arrest - in Kilgore's case, even though such affidavits are a matter of public record.

Warrick County officials say they are struggling to comply with the request while following a new Indiana Supreme Court rule that took effect in January 2005. Known as Administrative Rule 9, it requires courts to keep certain personal information - such as Social Security numbers and juvenile victims' names - confidential while still making the rest of the document available to the public.

But a top state court administrator and the director of a state prosecutors' group both say Warrick County officials could have created two versions of the affidavit at the outset when charges were filed n one confidential and one not. That is what a different rule, Trial Rule 5(G), requires them to do.

"It should be accessible, and if there was information in the affidavit that should not be disclosed, then there should be two versions," said Lilia Judson, executive director of the Division of State Court Administration.

Prosecutors in Vanderburgh and other counties easily comply with Rule 9 by printing two versions of each probable-cause affidavit with every criminal charge they file. The public version, on white paper, has the confidential information removed. The confidential version, printed on light green paper, remains in the court's file and can't be seen by the public. "That's an easy way to handle it so clerks can easily distinguish what to give out and what not to," Judson said.

In Vanderburgh County courts, affidavits usually are available immediately upon request. * * *

Warrick County Prosecutor Todd Corne suggested Thursday that the county adopt a system similar to that in Vanderburgh and other counties.

Corne said he inherited the Warrick County system when he was elected prosecutor, and up until the last two weeks, no news organizations had requested affidavits from his office in the year and a half since Rule 9 took effect. "It's something that's always been done in Warrick County and has been continued since I took office," he said of the procedure. * * *

Corne emphasized that he wants to provide the records and there is no intent to conceal information from the public and news media. But after the charges were filed, he had to go back and meticulously delete information, and then have it approved by the judge.

"We're not in a position to drop what we're doing, take apart a probable-cause affidavit and review it in significant detail for what needs to be redacted," he said. In the Kilgore case, that process has taken more than two weeks. In the meantime, the public is left in the dark about the nature of the allegations against Kilgore. "Now, we have had a couple of instances come up where it's apparent that the way we are doing it is, at the minimum, cumbersome," Corne said. By contrast, when defendants in other counties are charged with similar crimes, the public records of their cases become available almost immediately.

Judson said the Indiana Supreme Court adopted Administrative Rule 9 to protect the identity of victims, witnesses and confidential informants and also to protect personal information such as Social Security numbers from identity theft. It also was to pave the way for court records (minus confidential information) to be posted online eventually, she said.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on May 29, 2006 08:30 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts