The state Office of Open Records has ordered the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office to certify a record believed to pertain to the Nizah Morris incident.
In a seven-page ruling issued Aug. 14, the OOR ordered the D.A.’s Office to certify the record within 30 days, and provide a copy to PGN upon payment of an “appropriate” certification fee.
Certification verifies that an agency knows the identity of a record it’s providing, in response to an open-records request.
Morris was a transgender woman found with a fractured skull in 2002, shortly after receiving a “courtesy ride” from Officer Elizabeth Skala. Inexplicably, Skala initiated an unrelated traffic stop while assigned to handle Morris, who was intoxicated.
The stop contributed to a three-hour delay before Skala responded to Morris after her head injury, at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital. By that time, Morris was brain-dead. Her homicide remains unsolved.
Eight years ago, PGN received a dispatch record for the traffic stop from the city’s Police Advisory Commission, but it’s missing the incident’s location, priority level and district-control number. PGN gave this record to the D.A.’s Office and asked for complete records for the traffic stop.
Since 2013, the D.A.’s Office has submitted seven affidavits, indicating its only “arguably responsive” record for the traffic stop was provided by PGN. But PGN challenges the affidavits, because the agency hasn’t certified the record in question, nor has it denied having a dispatch record for the traffic stop in a different format. Once the agency certifies its “arguably responsive” record, the public can be assured the agency doesn’t have another record for the traffic stop in a complete format.
The D.A.’s Office told the OOR it doesn’t have to certify the record.
“[PGN] is not entitled to a ‘certification’ by the District Attorney’s Office of a record [PGN] has not been granted access to by the District Attorney’s Office,” the D.A.’s Office stated in an OOR filing. The state’s open-records law doesn’t enable requesters to simply give a record to an agency and “demand” its certification, the D.A.’s Office said. The agency also termed PGN’s certification request “redundant” and “harassing.”
Melissa B. Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association, expressed hope that the D.A.’s Office would comply with the OOR’s order.
“Hopefully, the OOR’s order will put a successful end to the paper’s quest for basic, accurate information about the Nizah Morris case from the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office,” Melewsky said. “The struggle for access in this case illustrates one of the fundamental problems that Pennsylvanians face when seeking access to criminal-justice records: The open-records law’s criminal-investigation exemption is overly broad, and it makes oversight and accountability difficult, at best.”
Charles P. Goodwin, an attorney for PGN, reiterated the importance of transparency in the Morris case.
“The OOR ruling is an important step forward in bringing true transparency to the Nizah Morris investigation,” Goodwin said.
Numerous organizations have called for a state probe of the Morris case, including Human Rights Campaign, the National Center for Transgender Equality, the National LGBTQ Task Force, the Eighth Ward, the Police Advisory Commission, Jewish Social Policy Action Network, Keystone Progress, Philadelphia FIGHT, GALAEI, Racial Unity, Equality Pennsylvania, GALLOP, William Way LGBT Community Center, P-FLAG, Mazzoni Center, LGBT Elder Initiative, ACLU of Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania Youth Congress. n