California District Attorney’s Records Subject to Disclosure through Prisoner’s Public Records Request

The California Appeals Court for the Fourth District held that a district attorney’s office was required to produce records to a prisoner seeking them through the California Public Records Act (CPRA).

La Twon Reginald Weaver, a California prisoner sentenced to death, sought documents from the District Attorney’s Office (“District Attorney”) of San Diego County in January 2013 related to his investigation into the District Attorney’s potentially race-motivated prosecution of death penalty cases. The District Attorney denied Weaver’s request, claiming that the documents were exempt under the CPRA and the state constitution. Weaver filed a petition in the San Diego County Superior Court to compel the disclosure of the documents. The superior court denied the petition on March 26, 2013 and Weaver appealed. On March 12, 2014, the appellate court vacated the order and directed the superior court to grant Weaver’s petition.

Weaver specifically requested copies of court documents in two cases alleging selective prosecution of capital cases by the District Attorney and charging documents from January 1977 to May 1993, filed by the District Attorney in murder cases. The District Attorney denied the request, asserting that (1) under the CPRA, the documents were not subject to disclosure as they were exempt as investigatory files and were protected by other federal or state law, (2) Weaver’s requests invaded the privacy rights of “hundreds of defendants and victims,” protected by the state constitution and (3) the requests were exceedingly burdensome, incurring $3,400 in costs.
According to the appellate court, the CPRA had been enacted to promote public access to information held by public agencies. Documents filed in court – including the files Weaver sought – fall under this classification. The California Supreme Court has held “that a public agency may [not] shield a record from public disclosure, regardless of its nature, simply by placing it in a file labeled ‘investigatory.’” Thus, the appellate court concluded, the requested documents were subject to disclosure.

Likewise, the disclosures of public documents do not violate the right to privacy under the state constitution, the appellate court determined. “There is no reasonable expectation of privacy in documents required to be filed in court when those documents are not filed under seal.” The appellate court also determined that the District Attorney had relied upon an outdated state law forbidding certain disclosure. That law had been revised to allow a “Public prosecutor… to respond to a request for public[] disclosure information pursuant to the [CPRA].”

In analyzing the District Attorney’s “burdensome” claim, the appellate court noted that the superior court had not addressed it. The District Attorney supported this claim under ta subsection of the CPRA, which allowed for exemptions to disclosure where “the public interest served by not disclosing the record clearly outweighs the public interest served by disclosure of the record.” Taking into account Weaver’s status as a condemned prisoner, the appellate court reasoned that “it is inconceivable to us that any countervailing interest that the District Attorney could assert outweighs the magnitude of the public’s interest” and that “the approximate [] $3,400… pales in comparison to the interests of Weaver and [the] public in disclosure.”

In addition to vacating the superior court’s order, the appellate court held Weaver liable for costs. See: Weaver v. Superior Court, 224 Cal. App. 4th 746 (Cal. App. 4th Dist. 2014).

Related legal case