PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) - The Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled Monday that the right to privacy outweighs the public’s right to know details of a state police investigation into the son of former Gov. Lincoln Chafee, who pleaded no contest to giving alcohol to underage people at a party on the governor’s property in 2012.
Open government advocates said that they were disappointed by the ruling, but that it was too early to know how the decision would affect the public’s ability to gain access to such records and examine police conduct.
The Providence Journal sued to get the records from state police. The court said that the newspaper had not pointed to any evidence that state police or others acted improperly during the investigation.
“The seeker of information must provide some evidence that government negligence or impropriety was afoot,” the court wrote.
It added: “Such a tenuous ’public interest’ is insufficient to mandate disclosure.”
The court also waved off the newspaper’s argument that Caleb Chafee is due less privacy because of his plea of no contest, or nolo contendere.
“It is a common tactical move for a defendant to plead guilty or nolo contendere rather than take his chances in court, to avoid the exposure of unfavorable facts during a public trial,” it wrote in a footnote.
Attorney General Peter F. Kilmartin hailed the ruling.
“This decision makes clear that all Rhode Island citizens do have considerable privacy interests, which should not be easily displaced absent a particularly noteworthy public interest,” he said in a written statement.
Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the decision creates a “Catch-22” for anyone who wants to examine how police investigations are conducted.
“Essentially, they’re saying you need to have evidence of impropriety when the best evidence will be the records that are being withheld. It could make it very difficult for the public and the media to access to records that might shed light on serious improprieties,” he said.
He called for a change in the open records law, but conceded that would be an uphill battle in the General Assembly.
“These changes generate a lot of resistance,” he said.
John Marion of the open government group Common Cause said he was still reviewing the decision, but said it seems to set a higher bar than what has been used in the past. He said the impact will be influenced by how the attorney general’s office interprets the opinion in future disputes over records.
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