Case Detail
| Case Title | JOHNSON v. FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | Eastern District of Pennsylvania | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Philadelphia | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 2:2014cv01720 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2014-03-21 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2016-09-21 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | HONORABLE GENE E.K. PRATTER | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | JESSICA LEIGH JOHNSON | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Description | Jessica Johnson works as an investigator for the Federal Community Defender Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which represents death-sentence prisoner Odell Corley. Johnson had made requests to the FBI for records concerning Corley. In preparation for filing a FOIA suit against the FBI, Johnson requested a waiver of fees for filing her action since she works for a government-funded office.Jessica Johnson works as an investigator for the Federal Community Defender Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, which represents death-sentence prisoner Odell Corley. Johnson had made requests to the FBI for records concerning Corley. In preparation for filing a FOIA suit against the FBI, Johnson requested a waiver of fees for filing her action since she works for a government-funded office. Complaint issues: waiver of filing feewaiver of filing fee | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 1 Complaint attachment 2 Complaint attachment 3 Complaint attachment 4 Complaint attachment 5 Complaint attachment 6 Complaint attachment 7 Complaint attachment 8 Complaint attachment 9 Complaint attachment 10 Complaint attachment 11 Complaint attachment 12 Complaint attachment 13 Complaint attachment 14 Complaint attachment 15 Complaint attachment 16 Complaint attachment 17 Complaint attachment 18 Complaint Opinion/Order [30] Opinion/Order [31] FOIA Project Annotation: Generally, the scope of exemptions tends to expand over time as courts continue to accept the government's arguments over what types of records need protection from potential public disclosure. Perhaps one of the most useful illustrations of this trend has been with Exemption 7, which started out covering law enforcement files. Because of several D.C. Circuit opinions finding the breadth of the exemption's coverage to be much greater than Congress had intended, Exemption 7 was split into six sub-parts as part of the 1974 FOIA amendments, largely to both clarify its intended coverage, but more specifically to restrict a broad interpretation of the exemption that allowed law enforcement agencies to withhold entire files. Since that time, however, the various sub-parts have been subjected to their own interpretive expansion. A recent district court decision involving Exemption 7(A) (interference with ongoing investigation or proceeding) serves to illustrate some of the exemption's remaining interpretative tensions. The case involved a request by Jessica Leigh Johnson, an investigator for the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia. FCDO represented Odell Corley, who had been convicted of capital murder in connection with an August 2002 attempted robbery of the Pines Bank in Indiana. Corley was convicted in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana in 2004 and was sentenced to death in 2014. His sentence was upheld on appeal. In January 2010, Corley filed a motion under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 to vacate, set aside, or correct his sentence. That motion remains active in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana. Johnson asked the FBI Laboratory Division for any records concerning the FBI's investigation of the attempted robbery of the Pines Bank. The agency told Johnson that any responsive records would be subject to Exemption 7(A). Johnson appealed to OIP, which remanded the case to the FBI for a search. The agency located 5,827 pages. After Johnson committed to paying estimated costs, the FBI located more records comprised of 23 electronic media items. The agency reviewed 856 pages and released 95 pages in part, citing Exemption 7(A) and Exemption 7(E) (investigative methods and techniques). In a second release, the agency reviewed 5,059 pages and released portions of 86 pages, again citing Exemption 7(A) and Exemption 7(E). Johnson appealed once again and OIP upheld the FBI's Exemption 7(A) claim. Judge Gene Pratter started his examination of the case law by noting that "it is generally insufficient for the agency to simply cite categorical codes in connection with each withheld document, and then provide a generic explanation of what the codes signify." He pointed out that "thus, 'while the use of the categorical method does not per se render a Vaughn index inadequate, an agency using justification codes must also include specific factual information concerning the documents withheld and correlate the exemption to the withheld documents.'" In a footnote, Pratter indicated the government relied heavily on case law dealing with national security issues and observed that "matters of individual rights in the criminal justice context deserve and demand careful consideration. They are not necessarily cases of equivalencies. This case falls squarely into a criminal justice context rather than a national security context, so the statements of the relevant legal standard from those cited cases involving national security and foreign policy are of somewhat limited applicability." Whether Exemption 7(A) was applicable at all hinged on whether or not Corley's challenge to his conviction constituted a pending or prospective enforcement proceeding. The FBI argued that Corley could use any information to undercut and interfere with a new trial. As a result, the agency contended that only public sources of information�"such as newspaper articles�"would be unlikely to interfere with a possible new trial if Corley succeeded with his § 2255 motion. Johnson argued on the other hand that "such a motion is not an appeal," that the § 2255 motion was available only after a conviction became final, and that the "they should not be viewed as enforcement proceedings under the FOIA." Noting that "there is very little case law addressing the issue of whether collateral attacks on criminal convictions are themselves 'enforcement proceedings' under the FOIA," Pratter suggested that "the existence of a pending motion under § 2255 makes it reasonably foreseeable that an enforcement proceeding (i.e., a new trial) will take place, leading to the expectation that Exemption 7(A) may apply to protect materials whose release could reasonably be expected to interfere with that new trial. To be sure, proceedings in connection with a § 2255 motion are not, in and of themselves, enforcement proceedings because they are not directly related to prosecuting the defendant. Nonetheless, Exemption 7(A) may apply whenever a specific enforcement proceeding is pending or prospective. Where there is a pending § 2255 motion and the movant is seeking a new trial, the new trial constitutes a prospective enforcement proceeding that may implicate Exemption 7(A). Thus, even though the pending proceedings under § 2255 are collateral and deal with the constitutionality of the process used to convict and confine Mr. Corley, the possibility that the court will grant Mr. Corley's motion and the United States will be left to prosecute Mr. Corley again is sufficient for Exemption 7(A) to possibly apply." In a footnote, Pratter added that "the Court does not mean to suggest that Exemption 7(A) would necessarily bar every prisoner serving a sentence who may file a § 2255 motion�"even a second or successive § 2255 motion�"from successfully securing the disclosure of materials from the investigative file relating to his or her case. Indeed, it may be that the prospect of a new trial is insufficiently 'concrete' to implicate Exemption 7(A) where a FOIA request is made and there is no § 2255 motion pending. . ." Johnson argued the agency's claims that Corley would misuse the information were "generic and speculative." Relying on the Supreme Court's decision in NLRB v. Robbins Tire & Rubber Co., 437 U.S. 214 (1978), in which the court found witness statements were categorically protected, even though there was no evidence that Robbins Tire would misuse the information, Pratter explained that "here, as in Robbins Tire, there is no specific evidence that Mr. Corley or any specific third party is at all likely to commit any of the bad acts conjured up by the FBI, but the disclosure of previously undisclosed information could nevertheless reasonably lead to interference with enforcement proceedings." Pratter then noted that the agency's categorical claim under Exemption 7(A) applied only to the extent that the withheld information had not been previously disclosed. He explained that "the evidence introduced at Mr. Corley's trial constitutes a specific set of materials, likely present in the investigative file at issue, which was placed in the public record. Ms. Johnson claims that some of the withheld materials were made public at Mr. Corley's criminal trial, but the FBI has failed to identify which documents (or categories of documents) were or were not introduced as evidence in that trial. In light of the fact that the United States has already presented its case once before, and some of the materials in the investigative filed (including the identities of witnesses and the investigative tactics used by government agents) are claimed to be matters of public record, it cannot be that their release could reasonably be expected to result in any of the harms articulated by the FBI." He pointed out that "in contrast to the categorical assertion of Exemption 7(A) in Robbins Tire, where the plaintiff sought advance access to witness statements that were not matters of public record, at least some of the materials in this case are being withheld to protect the identities of witnesses whose identities may already be matters of public record. . .Such information likely having been disclosed and made part of the public record, it is impossible to see how its disclosure by way of a FOIA request would have any different effect than did its earlier disclosure during litigation." Ordering the agency to supplement its Vaughn index to provide more detail, Pratter observed that "without a detailed description of the materials that are in the investigative file, especially a detailed description of which materials were made part of the public record at trial or produced in discovery, the Court is in no position to find that any of the materials in the investigative file risk interfering with Mr. Corley's possible second trial." The agency had also made claims under Exemption 3 (other statutes), Exemption 5 (privileges), Exemption 7(C) (invasion of privacy concerning law enforcement records), Exemption 7(D) (confidential sources), and Exemption 7(E) (investigative methods and techniques). But because of its primary reliance on a categorical application of Exemption 7(A), Pratter told the agency that he had no way to know where information protected by other exemptions might actually appear in the records. He indicated the agency could explain such claims in further detail in its supplemental index addressing the categorical applicability of Exemption 7(A).
Opinion/Order [45]Issues: Exemption 7(A) - Categorical exemption FOIA Project Annotation: A federal court in Pennsylvania has ruled that the FBI must search for records in its file on convicted murderer Odell Corley that no longer pertain to the question of Corley's guilt and provide an index to the counsel for Jessica Leigh Johnson, an investigator for the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia, which is representing Corley in his federal appeal of his state conviction. The court had previously agreed with the FBI that Corley's post-conviction appeal meant the FBI records pertained to an ongoing investigation for purposes of Exemption 7(A) (ongoing investigation or proceeding). But the court also told the FBI to disclose all records that had been disclosed to Corley as part of discovery during his original trial After having done so, the agency contended that it had no practical way to determine if any other materials had been made public through the trial and asked the court to dismiss the case. Johnson argued the FBI had not met its burden of showing that all other records remained exempt. The court agreed, noting that while the FBI contended that its files consisted of those records that had been released to Corley in discovery and those records that were not made public. But the court indicated that it "foresees an third category of documents�"documents that were not disclosed at Mr. Corley's trial and were not included in the Discovery File, but have not the 'connective tissue' between the document and the claimed exemptions due to the information that was disclosed through discovery and during Mr. Corley's trial." The court observed that "as Ms. Johnson points out, the FBI is the sole party in possession of both the Discovery File and its own investigative file. Consequently, the FBI is the only party capable of comparing the two sets of documents and determining whether portions of its files are segregable and nonexempt. In this instance, the agency asks that the Court 'listen to reason' by listening only to what the agency has to say on the matter. The assertions in the [FBI] Declaration that the task of comparing the two sets of documents would be unduly burdensome do not justify the FBI's failure to compile a Vaughn index with particular details connecting each withheld document to the claimed exemptions as well as sufficient detail to allow the Court to determine whether all segregable nonexempt portions have been disclosed." But the court indicated that it would "limit disclosure of the requested documents to only Ms. Johnson's counsel. After reviewing the documents, counsel may propose a schedule to the Court for the disclosure of documents to others, including Ms. Johnson. The FBI will then have an opportunity to submit specific objections to the proposed schedule."
Opinion/Order [46]Issues: Search - Reasonableness of search, Litigation - Vaughn index Opinion/Order [55] Opinion/Order [56] FOIA Project Annotation: A federal court in Pennsylvania has ruled in favor of the FBI after the agency requested the court reconsider its earlier ruling requiring the agency to disclose to Jessica Johnson's counsel all records for which it had not provided sufficient justification for its exemption claims. Johnson, an investigator for the Federal Community Defender Office in Philadelphia, requested records on the murder conviction of Odell Corley as part of a bank robbery in Indiana. The Defender's Office was representing Corley in his post-conviction appeal. The FBI found 5,827 pages of potentially responsive records, ultimately disclosing 180 pages with redactions made primarily under Exemption 7(A) (interference with ongoing investigation or proceeding) and Exemption 7(E) (investigative methods and techniques). Johnson challenged the processing of the request, pointing out that many records were disclosed to Corley during discovery in his trial. The court agreed that Johnson, as Corley's representative, was entitled to the entire discovery file. The agency disclosed the entire file, all of which originated with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Indiana. Johnson questioned the disclosure, noting that the FBI should also have responsive records. The court found the FBI had not justified many of its exemption claims and ordered the agency to disclose those records to Johnson's counsel. The FBI then asked the court to reconsider that decision. After a third round of affidavits, the court agreed with the agency, finding that all its exemption claims were appropriate. Upholding the agency's 7(A) claims, the court observed that "anything contained within its investigative file that would have entered the public domain during the prosecution of Mr. Corley has been provided to Ms. Johnson in the Discovery File, [which] is sufficient for the FBI to meet its burden under FOIA." The court rejected Johnson's public domain claim, pointing out that "the Court concludes that the FBI has provided Ms. Johnson with all documents she has proved were in the public domain." The court added that "Ms. Johnson has not provided a legal basis to conclude that the FBI must produce duplicative or redundant materials beyond or in addition to what the FBI has already provided in the Discovery File."
Issues: Search - Reasonableness of search, Exemption 7 - Law enforcement records | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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