The succession of Gene and Betsy Hackman won the partial victory in court

A Santa Fe judge said that the deaths of Gene and Betsy Hackman linked to the recordings could be released to the public – but in a mixed decision rendered on Monday afternoon, they stipulated that the images of the bodies in partially decomposition of the very private couple will not be released.

Throughout Monday, judge Matthew Wilson heard arguments in the first court of judicial district of Santa Fe of lawyers representing the family domain Hackman, which had asked that images and documents related to the two deaths in February, which are traditionally part of the public file, be deprived. Advice represented councils representing the County of Santa Fe, which pleaded in matters of state law and ensuring transparency and responsibility of the government.

“There will be no representation of one or the other body in a video production,” said Judge Wilson in his decision, which allows the release of a camera video for the External Police Corps and other documents. No photo or other explicit images of autopsy reports will not be made public either.

In March, the police and the medical examiner revealed elements of autopsy reports on the emblematic actor and his 30 -year -old wife. The bodies of the two were found on February 26 in separate rooms from their house during a wellness control; None of the two showed signs of external trauma, the police said, but Hackman’s cardiac stimulator had sent his last record on February 17, suggesting that he had died for at least a week before his body was discovered in a mud room off the couple’s kitchen.

Gene Hackman has died of severe cardiovascular disease, with Alzheimer’s disease as an important contributory factor and Betsy Hackman died in their living syndrome in hantavirus syndrome, a severe respiratory disease caused by viruses transmitted to humans by contact with infected curves, said the medical medical medical officer. The couple had endeavored to live a private life together in their house on Old Sunset Trail Road after having retired from Hollywood Life in 2004.

On Monday, Sante Fe lawyer, Kurt Sommer, told court that the Hackman domain had a duty to protect the property of Gene and Betsy, including photographs and videos taken from their corpses at the time when they were discovered and during their autopsies. The arguments brought on Monday if the temporary prohibition order that Wilson Judge granted on March 17, actually interrupting public access to autopsy reports and investigation reports for deaths should become an injunction, as their deaths are investigating and other aspects of their succession are settled.

“The names, resemblances and images of Gene and Betsy Hackman are precious and must be protected and this is clearly proven under the press which wanted to get their hands on the documents to exploit them for their own profit and gain,” said Sommer, lawyer Kurt Sommer for the succession during an audience today in the New Mexico compared to the materials linked to the deaths of February. “This succession has a duty to protect the property of Gene and Betsy, including photographs and videos of their corpses,” said the lawyer for Hiante Fe.

The major question was whether the couple maintained a right to privacy in death, as well as the right to control the use of their image after death. The succession also argued that the publication of images could lead to future security problems in the couple’s succession.

“The request for video is nothing more than a door exhibition to the lifestyle of hackmans which could not be affected by the press during their lifetime,” said Sommer. “There is no damage to the media while waiting for these questions to be decided, a large amount of videos has already been published in the press.”

The County Council of Santa Fe, Walker Boyd, argued that the couple does not keep any right to private life in death, according to the laws of the state currently on books. He called it “very unusual” for a judge to be invited to seize an order “to prevent the entities of the State from making their required statutes”, that is to say access to the files surrounding the death of a public figure.

“The succession and intermediary family members do not have the right of intimacy affirmed here,” said Boyd.

The Associated Press, CBS News and CBS Studios intervened in the case after the judge rendered the temporary ordinance in February. Lawyer Gregory P. Williams, representing the media, told the judge that court documents have shown that images of the couple’s bodies would not be disseminated and that they would scramble to hide them from other files.

“There is certainly a public interest to know how their death has been the subject of an investigation and to know how it was managed,” Williams said in court.