Few things can provoke more emotion and clouded judgment than the death of a child, and the Colorado Legislature is a clear example of that as they make a seriously misguided effort to protect grieving parents.
Lawmakers have all but approved Senate Bill 223, which would make secret the autopsy reports of minors.
The bill’s approval would be a grievous mistake that Gov. John Hickenlooper needs to rectify with a veto.
Lawmakers this week listened to testimony from wrongheaded coroners who persuaded legislators that there’s a large and growing segment of the public eager to seek the autopsy reports of children and young adults who committed suicide, and that publication on social media endangers the lives of other children, who would copy such a tragedy.
We’ve seen no proof such a danger exists, despite what appears to be a flurry of undocumented anecdotes and hearsay.
The very real danger is in covering up information that’s been critical in the past to uncovering wrongdoing by government agencies and officials, and it will certainly be used for those purposes some day in the future.
No good ever, ever comes from allowing the government to hide information, especially information that sets straight the details of the death of a child.
We respect and admire the motives of genuinely sympathetic coroner officials, who think they are sparing grieving families from a unnecessary aggravation. But their misguided sympathy is the result of threats that don’t exist, and their efforts present a danger to innocent children who will be wrongfully killed by parents, guardians and even police.
Frank LoMonte, director of the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information at the University of Florida testified at the Capitol that the recent spate of police shootings would be a compelling reason for public inspection of autopsy results.
“That is a salient point, given the headlines of the last two or three years involving regrettable instances of young people being shot by police officers under doubtful circumstances,” LoMonte said, according to the Associated Press. “When a case like that comes up, I think the public will be clamoring for an autopsy report.”
Besides shedding light on the tragic death of Colorado’s youth, access to these public records have been instrumental in protecting children in the care of the state.
Colorado autopsy reports allowed the media to a 2012 report on the unthinkable death of 72 children who died of abuse or neglect and had been under the care of state child protective workers, according to an Associated Press report on the bill. The investigation led to changes in state law to shore up child protection by the state.
Current law already allows for families of dead children to ask courts to seal autopsy reports.
This bill is a perfect example of government creating a solution in search of a problem.
There is none, despite the hyperbole and fiction by people like El Paso County Coroner Robert Bux, whose testimony piqued the natural emotions of state lawmakers.
Parents of children who have died deserve the public’s sympathy and sensitivity, but the public needs and deserves an open records law to hold accountable the very government that’s seeking to take that critical right away.
We beseech Hickenlooper to veto this bill if it reaches his desk.