A panel of three judges of the 9th Circuit Court of Aproces of the United States canceled a decision by a federal judge of San Diego two years ago which ordered the Sheriff Kelly Martinez to publish internal files in the case of a Man seriously injured in the county prison.
The opinion, which was issued at the end of last month but not officially not sealed before Monday, came in a 2-1 decision, the dissident judge claiming that the material in dispute should clearly be made available to the public.
He also denied a decision in 2023 of the judge of the American district court Jinston Ohta, who said that the public is interested in the apprenticeship of what was behind the deadly injuries of Frankie Greer inside the prison central.
The lawyers of the County of San Diego argued that the reports produced by the Critical Incidents Examination Committee of the Sheriff, or CIRB, are protected by the lawyer-client privilege due to the presence of the Sheriff’s lawyer during the examination of the examination committee.
“The district court has judged that documents are not protected against disclosure by the avocado-client privilege or under the doctrine of the work product,” the judges wrote. “We believe that the avocado-client privilege protects the CIRB documents in question here and, therefore, inverse.”
The sheriff returned questions to the Board of the County lawyer on Monday, who defends the county of civil proceedings. A spokesperson said the county appreciated the 9th circuit decision.
“The analysis of the court has correctly identified the long-standing principle of the lawyer-client privilege,” said spokesman Tammy Glenn.
“While the county is transparent of public information, we recognize that everyone has the right to consult their lawyers and expect these communications to remain confidential,” she said. “The San Diego sheriff office regularly discloses information to the public on its website and in other channels.”
Lawyers representing the San Diego Union-Tribune and other press organizations declared that majority opinion exposed a plan that would allow the sheriff and other representatives of the government to retain public files in the future.
“Given the clear division between the judges, the importance of the questions and the uncertainty that the decision creates, we believe that the case would benefit from the exam by additional judges of the 9th circuit,” said Timothy Blood, one of the lawyers in San Diego who co-coated the media.
The CIRB is made up of senior commanders who consider potential changes to sheriff policy or training following incidents that cause injury or death.
After the County of San Diego agreed to pay Greer nearly $ 8 million, the Union-Tribune asked for the CIRB files linked to the case.
More specifically, Greer lawyers have received copies of CIRB reports concerning 12 deaths in detention in the context of the legal process known as Discovery. But the documents were held under the seal and not made available for the public inspection.
The Union-Tribune asked for the files because the County of San Diego had one of the highest rates of death in detention among the major counties of California.
The county has also paid tens of millions of dollars in legal colonies to families of people who died in prison and to other people like Greer who have suffered injuries that have lives in detention.
Martinez refused to disclose the documents publicly after Greer’s trial settled, so that the Union-Tribune, the prison news and the voice of San Diego, asked the Federal Court to order the ‘Agency to return them.
Ohta judged in 2023 that the sheriff had to publish the requested files.
“There are valid and imperative reasons for the public to be informed of the conditions within the county prisons,” said the judge. “The public is interested in these documents.”
The County of San Diego appealed this decision a few hours before the publication of the documents. The 9th circuit granted the request of the county of suspension of the liberation order while the decision was being examined.
The majority opinion rejected Ohta’s conclusion that CIRB reports were not protected by the lawyer-client privilege. The two judges said that one of the main objectives of the internal examination committee was to limit the legal liability of the sheriff.
“When something goes terribly bad in a prison – like a non -natural death in detention or a serious injury – the prison expects reasonably to a trial, like that here, to follow,” they wrote, referring to Greer trial.
“The investigation – that is to say to discover what happened – is a predicate necessary for the evaluation of the responsibility of this past event and is therefore not separated from the supply of legal advice”, they added.
Judge Lucy H. Koh disagreed. In a 22 -page dissent, she said that the county lawyers had not established that the main objective of the CIRB was to protect the sheriff from legal responsibility. She said there were “many evidence” contrary, including the political manual of the sheriff, the declarations of the county officials and the CIRB reports themselves.
Koh also said that the county lawyers had never identified all those who received copies of the disputed reports and those who attended the CIRB meetings. Consequently, she said, the county had indeed renounced his privilege lawyer-client.
“Even assuming that the privilege had been properly asserted, the county did not propose any convincing explanation to explain why all of the CIRB reports must be retained,” wrote Koh. “These reports contain a lot of information which is undoubtedly not privileged. At the very least, this information must be disclosed. »»
Greer, an American army veteran who was a musician and artist, was arrested in 2018. He was assigned to the top of the three berths inside the central prison even if he had a diagnosed crisis disorder.
Sheriff deputies had confiscated his drugs and did not provide an appropriate alternative, said his civil trial. Greer then experienced a crisis and fell from the berth, suffering from a critical cerebral lesion.
The 12 CIRB reports sought after by the Union-Tribune involved unrelated cases involving people who died in the prisons of the County of San Diego. Greer lawyers used the files to help show what they called the County’s continuous contempt for the health and well-being of people in detention.
Danielle Pena, a lawyer who did not work on the Greer affair but represented families of several people who died in the custody of the County of San Diego, said that the publication of CIRB reports was in the public interest.
“This would lead to a complete reform and a responsibility,” she said.
When Martinez campaigned for the sheriff in 2022, she undertook to make the CIRB reports public, but she changed her position after winning the elections and featured the summaries of death deaths.
A bill signed in 2023 obliges Californian sheriffs to publish internal prison death files. Martinez began to publish files under this law, but gaps in what his office has so far made available to questions about compliance.
Originally published:
California Daily Newspapers
