Clay Calvert, Professor & Brechner Eminent Scholar in Mass Communication and Director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, has an article in the Northwestern University Law Review Colloquy. Here’s how the article begins:
“I just killed my two kids. . . . I drowned them. . . . They are 2 and 4. . . . I just shot myself. . . . with a gun. . . . Please hurry.”
That was the dying declaration of 21-year-old Julia Murray on February 16, 2010, preserved for all of posterity on a 911 emergency telephone recording and available to anyone and everyone in Florida—from journalists and police to even voyeurs and perverts—under that state’s open records laws. Murray and one of her three children are gone (the second child survived the drowning attempt), but her words remain. Should the public have a right to hear them?
In 2010, multiple events magnified public focus on the escalating tension between family members’ privacy rights with respect to the death-scene images and dying words of their loved ones, on the one hand, and the public’s right to access those documents, on the other.
You can read the full article on Northwestern University Law Review‘s web site. Many of the cases Calvert discusses have been reported on this site and/or pogowasright.org, and it is an issue that warrants serious consideration by privacy advocates, legal scholars, and journalists.
Via Concurring Opinions.
Is there any purpose, a significant purpose, other that exciting journalism that these taped calls need to be made public? If this was a trial with open records, that is a legal issue that would be decided by a judge. Some judges have respected the privacy of the family and kept such recording out of public record if not needed. This is sensational journalism and nothing more. If people want soap drama, turn on the TV and respect the privacy of families who already are living a tragedy.
One valid reason to keep such records subject to disclosure is for the public to be able to evaluate its government’s response to situations. For example, did EMS respond quickly enough in a particular case? If we can get the 9-1-1 tapes, we can figure out the time lapse, etc. That said, I do see a problem with some of this stuff being released because even though a court might hold that people have no reasonable expectation of privacy in making an emergency call, I would bet that most of the public has never even considered the issue and is in no condition to do so at the time they call 9-1-1.