A Philadelphia judge last week said computer-assisted dispatch records pertaining to the Nizah Morris incident belong in an official homicide file.
Common Pleas Judge Linda A. Carpenter made the statement during oral arguments in an open-records case involving the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.
Morris was a transgender woman found with a fatal head injury in 2002, shortly after a police “courtesy ride.” Her homicide remains unsolved.
PGN is seeking a certified copy of dispatch entries pertaining to a traffic stop initiated by Officer Elizabeth Skala, who gave Morris the ride. Inexplicably, Skala initiated the traffic stop while assigned to handle Morris, who was intoxicated.
As Skala ticketed a motorist at 13th and Market streets, Morris gradually became brain dead, laying unconscious at 16th and Walnut streets.
Philadelphia police claim that original dispatch records for Skala’s traffic stop are lost. But neither the police nor the D.A.’s Office have placed into their homicide files copies of dispatch records of the traffic stop obtained by PGN.
PGN obtained 13 dispatch entries for Skala’s stop from the city’s Police Advisory Commission in 2008. PGN gave the entries to the D.A.’s Office in 2009, but the office destroyed them.
In 2013, PGN once again gave the entries to the D.A.’s Office, and in 2015, the state Office of Open Records ordered the agency to certify them.
PGN maintains it’s entitled to a certified copy of the entries, or an affidavit of non-existence — neither of which the D.A.’s Office has produced.
In court papers, the D.A.’s Office trivialized the entries, comparing them to a photograph of the Loch Ness monster.
During oral arguments April 7, Carpenter made clear that she wouldn’t countenance such trivialization.
Assistant District Attorney Douglas M. Weck Jr. said PGN’s records originated at the police department, thus police are their proper custodian. But Weck also said police lost many Morris records, an assertion that didn’t appear to sit well with Carpenter.
Weck urged Carpenter to reverse OOR’s pro-certification ruling, claiming it’s not based on settled law, nor the intention of state legislators.
Carpenter said she’ll hold the matter under advisement while researching relevant law.
Several Morris advocates attended the proceeding, including Lou Lanni, who seeks to serve as a state legislator for the district where Morris was killed.
“If elected, I’ll ask hard questions about the Morris case,” Lanni said after the proceeding. “If local authorities don’t answer them, we’ll put them on trial in the court of public opinion. If their hands are clean, they should have no problems letting all of the facts be known, unless they have an active investigation with a suspect. I think it’s pretty clear that’s not the case.”