|
|
 |
Reporters Test Public's Right To Know Public records are invaluable sources of information -- if you can get your hands on them. By Lyssa Mudd and Sam Kennedy Public records are a mother lode of information and can be immensely valuable in researching a news story – if you can get your hands on them. Documents such as criminal court case records, arrest and search warrants, property records, and birth, marriage and death certificates are important reporting tools. Such records can provide everything from background information on individuals to detailed reports and testimony about crimes. To the reporters who researched and wrote the stories on this web site as part of a class project examining and updating the 1998 murder in Pittsburg, Calif. of a 15-year-old girl named Lisa Norrell, searching for these documents was time consuming and at times exciting, but often frustrating, too. They ran into testy clerks, false information and other difficulties in the course of their work. In the end, the key to success was persistence. Though these documents may sometimes be hard to find, laws guarantee their availability. Access to public records is a “a fundamental and necessary right,” according to the 1968 California Public Records Act. The following is a short rundown – in the reporters' own words – of how and where they found the documents they used as source material for their stories.
These records often also show the phone number, political party
and occupation of the voter. We found that in many cases, even those
people whose telephone numbers are unlisted in the phone book had written
their numbers on the voter registration card. By looking in the databases
of inactive and cancelled voters, we found people’s old addresses
and information about murder victims. It is also possible to look up
voters by their addresses. This is useful for finding out who lives
at a particular address and locating neighbors. The Office of County Records houses birth, death and marriage certificates. For a fee, all of these certificates are available to the public. The fee for duplicate birth and death certificates is eight dollars and marriage certificates cost 12 dollars. To retrieve a birth certificate you need the name of the child at birth, the date of birth, the city of birth and the mother's maiden name. For a death certificate you need the person’s name, date of death and the city where the death occurred. For a marriage certificate you need the groom's name, the bride's previous last name (maiden or married) and the date of marriage. Another clerk told us that marriage certificates were private, not public, and that we had no right to see them. However, journalists and media advocates have since informed us otherwise: unless there is a Contra Costa County-specific law to the contrary, the public should in fact have access to marriage certificates. This confusion over what in fact constitutes a “public record” was not uncommon. Some public officials and clerks, especially one sour clerk at the Superior Court in Pittsburg, can be extremely unhelpful, and disguise their unwillingness to grant requests by citing the “privacy” of the records. The trick is to be polite but insistent, and to be ready to explain California’s public records laws should the clerks remain obstinate. Many of these records can be ordered online from the useful county recorder’s website. Information about businesses with fictitious names is accessible in the recorder's office via terminals connected to a computer database. • Contra Costa County Assessor's office: property records: 651 Pine St., Martinez; tel: (925) 313-7400. In researching a key figure in the Norrell case, we came across the
addresses of residence and his former business in court records. In
order to find whether he owned the properties, we went to the assessor's
office, where the clerk looked up the addresses and told us who owned
the properties. Criminal files that pertain to felonies are found at the Contra Costa County Superior Court in Martinez (725 Court St.; tel: (925) 646-2462). Criminal files that pertain to misdemeanors are kept at the Superior Court in Pittsburg (45 Civic Avenue; tel: (925) 427-8173). To locate a criminal file, we looked up the defendant's last name on microfiche at each court. Then we gave the docket number to a court clerk who pulled the file. For a comprehensive list of the defendant's criminal files, we paid $5 for a "name search," which provided us with a "Record Search Request" containing the following: court, docket number, violation date, conviction/dismissal date, charges, severity and disposition (i.e. guilty or dismissed). Older criminal files must be ordered from storage, which can take a day or two, though files that we viewed from the 1970s were available on microfilm. Criminal files can be comprised of arrest and police reports, search warrants, hearing depositions and domestic violence reports. Arrest and police reports contain pertinent information about defendants, victims and witnesses, such as: addresses and phone numbers, social security and drivers license numbers and physical descriptions. Often there was a "Restricted" section at the bottom of the file, which a clerk stapled closed prior to our viewing. Some criminal files contained a separate folder stamped "Confidential" that the clerk removed before handing over the file. We were able to copy documents for $1 per page. • Civil court lawsuits: 1111 Ward St., Martinez; tel: (925) 646-2967 This requires the same procedure as criminal records: cases are listed
alphabetically by last name on microfiche. The fiche provides the case
number and date. We gave the name, case number, and date to the clerk,
who then found the file. Files must remain in the room. • Search warrants: Warrants are often included in case records. But warrants from cases in which no charges were filed, such as the Lisa Norrell case, are hard to find because they are not associated with an actual court case and therefore lack a docket number. This is not a problem in Martinez, where you can see the warrants on file if you have a name and date (or in the case of search warrants, an address of the place searched). But at the Superior Court in Pittsburg, warrants are filed by reference number. They cannot be looked up by name, date or address. No number, no warrant. So the question is how to get a warrant without a number. We called about 10 different clerks and other courthouse personnel in pursuit of one particular warrant number. We had the names of the subjects, the addresses searched and the dates. The police had even given us the police case number. Still, the dour and unhelpful clerk at Superior Court in Pittsburg could not or would not produce the file for us. She declined to even tell us how to find the warrant number. The police inspectors gave us one warrant number, but the warrant was sealed. (They have their own copies on file, and rarely deal with clerks.) We knew from newspaper articles and several conversations with police and judges that they had issued a censored version of the warrant. (We had asked for that too.) No luck. Finally, a clerk for Contra Costa County Superior Court Judge Joyce Cram's located the file for us. She said she went to the clerk and asked for it not by number but by describing the case. Although we were grateful that she finally located it, we were also frustrated by the inaccessibility of a document that was supposed to be public. The lesson is to call all the clerks involved with the case until you find someone who can help .• Coroner’s reports: 1960 Muir Road, Martinez; tel: (925)313-2850 The coroner's office is part of the Contra Costa County Sheriffs' Office. Also housed in the same complex of buildings are a criminology lab, the police headquarters, vice squad, and other offices. The coroner's office is located on the bottom level, near the criminology lab. The coroner is responsible for examining and conducting autopsies of bodies in homicides, suicides, accidental and unexplained deaths. To request documents related to an autopsy, take the name in question to the clerk. The clerk will then take the names of the deceased and retrieve the file numbers from her computer system. She then hands back the documents, which can be viewed one at a time. Copies of the coroner's reports, which are full of obscure medical terminology, are available for $26. The only file that was not immediately accessible was Lisa Norrell’s autopsy. Apparently because of the sealed (or redacted) nature of the report, a lieutenant had to grant permission for us to see it. When we saw the redacted version of the autopsy report the next day, we were allowed to copy any information we wanted. • Campaign statements: The Clerk-Recorder at 524 Main Street, Martinez; tel: (925) 646-2955 A list of candidates and ballot issues is available to anyone who asks.
The First Amendment, of course, guarantees that "Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of the press." Many people interpret this to mean that the press’s access to public records should not be restricted. The Federal Freedom of Information Act, passed by Congress in 1966, requires “agencies of the Federal Government to make certain agency information available for public inspection and copying and to establish and enable enforcement of the right of any person to obtain access to the records of such agencies, subject to statutory exemptions, for any public or private purpose.” The act was updated in 1974 and 1975 following the Watergate scandal.In 1968, California legislature took the extra step in passing the California Public Records Act (http://www.cfac.org/Law/CPRA/Text/cpra_text.html), which states, "access to information concerning the conduct of the people's business is fundamental and necessary right of every person in this state." It extends the guarantees of the Federal Freedom of Information Act to state agencies. Over the years, legal precedents have further defined the act. For example, the PSC Geothermal Services Company vs. the Superior Court of Imperial County ruling states, "the documents associated with the warrant are public documents 10 days after its execution… There is no exception in the statute for instances… where the search is used to further an ongoing investigation." However, the ruling allows documents to be sealed to protect informants' identities and when "subjects of such investigations might be alerted and impede the investigation by tampering with or destroying evidence." Additionally, it makes an exception for "information obtained by a public employee and which, if disclosed, is against the public interest." The ruling concludes that courts must undertake a "two-stage analysis of confidentiality and public interest necessary to support the sealing of the affidavit." The Watergate era in the mid and late 1970s saw a flowering of many such so-called “sunshine laws,” which provide greater access to public records across the country in an effort to create better public oversight and accountability on the part of local governments. In recent years, however, there have been a number of disturbing rollbacks to such accessibility, especially in Calif., where lawmakers have cracked down on public and press access to motor vehicle records and prison inmates. It’s up to journalists to lead the way in ensuring the public’s right to know the workings of government. Many organizations that represent journalists use public records and “sunshine” laws to fight for access to sealed or otherwise unavailable public documents. |
|
