Investigation records released to the public can’t later be restricted from public access, according to an Oct. 14 ruling in Cobb Superior Court.
The ruling requires the Cobb County Sheriff’s Office to provide to WXIA-TV previously released records about inmate deaths at the Cobb County Adult Detention Center.
The decision by Cobb Superior Court Judge A. Gregory Poole is a win for government transparency. Poole’s ruling means that once files related to an investigation are made public, those records no longer qualify for an exemption under the Georgia Open Records Act.
The Georgia First Amendment Foundation joined with other government transparency advocacy groups to file a friend-of-the-court brief supporting WXIA’s argument that the Atlanta broadcaster was entitled to investigation records previously released to other media outlets. WXIA successfully argued that the records could not be clawed back from public access simply because they also were being used in a separate investigation into another inmate death at the detention center.
Read coverage of the case by WXIA and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
