The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office has declined to participate in Commonwealth Court’s mediation program regarding pending litigation in the Nizah Morris case.
The D.A.’s Office claims it’s unable to certify a record relating to the Morris case, though a judge ruled the agency already certified the record.
The dispute stems from an open-records request filed by PGN, seeking a certified copy of all computer-aided dispatch records in the D.A.’s possession for a traffic stop in the Morris case.
Morris, a trans woman, was found with a fatal head wound in 2002, shortly after a “courtesy ride” from Officer Elizabeth Skala.
Inexplicably, Skala initiated a traffic stop at 13th and Market streets, though she was assigned to handle Morris, who was critically injured and clinging to life at 16th and Walnut streets.
In 2013, PGN gave the D.A.’s Office partial records for Skala’s traffic stop. Two years later, PGN asked the D.A.’s Office for a certified copy of its records for Skala’s traffic stop.
In June, Common Pleas Judge Linda A. Carpenter ruled the D.A.’s Office certified the document it received from PGN when the office submitted a February 2015 affidavit stating it doesn’t have additional records for Skala’s traffic stop. However, the D.A.’s Office refutes that it certified the document it received from PGN.
In July, the office appealed Carpenter’s ruling in Commonwealth Court.
PGN offered to participate in the court’s mediation program, which reportedly has a high rate of success. The program began in 2000.
“Overall, the mediation program has achieved a 45.5-percent resolution rate, on average, since its inception,” according to a press release issued by the court. “Litigants and their counsel thereby have avoided the time and expense associated with an appeal. These successful mediations have resolved disputes more quickly and eliminated the cost and uncertainty of the appellate process.”
But last week, the D.A.’s Office declined to participate in the court’s mediation program.
In a recent filing, the D.A.’s Office says it cannot certify the document at issue because it didn’t create the document, isn’t a custodian of the document and doesn’t have the original document.
PGN supports Carpenter’s ruling, which notes that Philadelphia police lost their Morris homicide file and the D.A.’s Office helped partially reconstruct the file.
“Under these circumstances, the DAO is now the agency that has assumed some custodial control of this document,” Carpenter wrote.
In 2013, after a 10-year review, the city’s Police Advisory Commission took an unprecedented step of recommending state and federal probes of the Morris case. But so far, no state or federal agency appears to be investigating the case.