Case Detail
| Case Title | World Publishing Company v. United States Department of Justice | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| District | Northern District of Oklahoma | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| City | Tulsa | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Case Number | 4:2009cv00574 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Filed | 2009-09-03 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Date Closed | 2011-03-28 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Judge | Judge Terence Kern | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Plaintiff | World Publishing Company | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Defendant | United States Department of Justice and its subordinate bureau - United States Marshal Service | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Appeal | Tenth Circuit 11-5063 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Documents | Docket Complaint Complaint attachment 5 Complaint attachment 6 Opinion/Order [40] FOIA Project Annotation: A district court in Oklahoma has become the most recent court to jump into the mug shots dispute, ruling decisively against the Tulsa World and upholding the U.S. Marhals Service's position that mug shots of federal prisoners are categorically exempt from disclosure under Exemption 7(C) (invasion of privacy concerning law enforcement records). Judge Terence Kern embraced the reasoning of the Eleventh Circuit in its recent ruling in Karantsalis v. Dept of Justice 2011 WL 846242 (11th Cir. Mar. 11, 2011) and the district court in the earlier decision in Times Picayune v. Dept of Justice, 37 F. Supp. 2d 472 (E.D. La 1999), finding, like those two courts, that the privacy of individual prisoners in their appearance at the time of booking clearly outweighed any public interest in disclosure of the photos. Although the Sixth Circuit had upheld the disclosure of mug shots in Detroit Free Press v. Dept of Justice, 73 F.3d 93 (6th Cir.1996), every court that has heard a mug shot case since then has ruled the other way. Ironically, because mug shots are disclosable in the Sixth Circuit, the Marshals Service has adopted a policy of withholding mug shots except in the Sixth Circuit, where they are freely available under FOIA. The case in Tulsa involved a request by the newspaper's city editor for six mug shots of individuals being held at the Tulsa jail under a contract with the Marshals Service. The agency denied the request, the newspaper appealed, its appeal was denied, and the newspaper filed suit. Apparently not content to ride its winning streak from the Karantsalis case, the government first tried to convince Kern that the newspaper did not have standing because the request was made by the city editor. Although the city editor had not sent her request on newspaper letterhead, she had signed it in her position as city editor and provided the newspaper's address as the mailing address. Kern pointed out that "there is no indication in the letter that [the city editor] was a freelance journalist who wrote for several publications, and there is no indication that [the city editor] planned to use the booking photographs in any other capacity other than for publication in Tulsa World. In addition, a reasonable reader would conclude from the letter that Tulsa World was a local newspaper engaged in publishing news articles." Further, the Justice Department had accepted and adjudicated the appeal treating the newspaper as the requester. Kern observed that "it is inconsistent for Defendants to assert Tulsa World's lack of standing in this case, after it acknowledged and identified Tulsa World as the proper appellant throughout the administrative appeal." Kern then reviewed the existing case law, treating Circuit Judge Alan Norris' dissent in the Detroit Free Press case as a more appropriate analysis of the FOIA than the majority's opinion. Taking guidance from the Supreme Court's decision in Reporters Committee, Kern indicated that he was "conducting categorical balancing rather than ad-hoc balancing. Categorical balancing is appropriate because the 'case fits into a genus in which the balance characteristically tips in one direction.' The Court does not find it necessary or judicially feasible to evaluate each specific indicted individual's privacy interest in his or her mug shot. Instead, this is a situation that calls for categorical balancing and a categorical rule that leads to consistency in treatment within this judicial district." Kern examined the privacy interest in mug shots. He observed that "common sense dictates that individuals desire to control dissemination of any visual depictions of themselves and consider such visual depictions 'personal matters.' . . .Even more than an ordinary photograph, citizens have a privacy interestâ€"i.e., an interest in avoiding disclosure ofâ€"booking photographs because of their stigmatizing effect and their association with criminal activity." He continued: "The Court also concludes that federal indictees awaiting trialâ€"the specific category of individuals at issueâ€"are 'private citizens' who maintain all privacy interests protected by the FOIA. Because the subjects of the booking photographs are 'private citizens,' the privacy interest jeopardized by disclosure is 'at its apex.' The Court rejects any notion that federal indictees lose a privacy interest in their booking photographs simply because they have been charged with a crime, are the subject of ongoing criminal proceedings, and are therefore some type of 'public figure' with reduced expectations of privacy. There is no precedent for importing 'public figure/private person' distinctions or 'expectation of privacy' standards from other areas of law to the Exemption 7(C) analysis." Kern next pointed out that dissemination of the photographs was severely limited. He noted that the USMS's policy "prevents the disclosure of federal indictees' booking photographs to the news media and otherwise prevents their disclosure except for law enforcement purposes. Therefore, the booking photographs at issue are, as a literal matter, not freely available to the public. Tulsa World argued that USMS posted booking photographs on its website to "brag" about the capture of fugitives, suggesting the photos were used for public relations purposes rather than law enforcement purposes. Kern responded that "this argument incorrectly assumes that law enforcement purposes cease to be served after a fugitive is captured. But even assuming no law enforcement purpose is served post-capture, this argument has little relevance to the Exemption 7(C) analysis. The question presented is whether release of detained federal indictees' booking photographs implicates privacy interests, and there is no dispute that Defendants do not generally release such booking photographs for public viewing. Whether Defendants properly follow their own Policy in the case of captured fugitives does not impact the Court's conclusion in this regard." Tulsa World next argued that Oklahoma and most other states routinely made mug shots public, substantially diluting any claim that federal mug shots should be private. Although one would think this state policy would be quite relevant to whether or not the disclosure of mug shots could be considered an "unwarranted" invasion of privacy, Kern largely dismissed it. He observed that "state and local policies are relevant to the extent they demonstrate whether the law enforcement profession generally believes, or does not believe, that individuals have a privacy interest in certain information." He then concluded that state and federal mug shots were "distinct pieces of information," but provided no convincing basis on which to distinguish them except to say federal authorities did not routinely release them. He indicated that "booking photographs released by local agencies are generally different photographs than those taken by USMS. Different photographs are taken at different moments in time and may impart entirely different information. In other words, release of one booking photograph does not reveal precisely the same information as another booking photograph. Therefore, other law enforcement entities' policies of releasing booking photographs do not, in this Court's view, remove the privacy interest that would otherwise attach under Exemption 7(C) to that same prisoner's federal booking photograph." Obviously one photograph cannot be absolutely identical to another photograph. But why a federal mug shot is intensely private while a state mug shot is not remains unexplained. Perhaps federal prisoners are consistently caught at their most awkward down-and-out moment, while state mug shots are more akin to formal portraits. If there is a legitimate difference, Kern certainly doesn't explain it. Kern rejected the newspaper's argument taken from the Detroit Free Press case that federal prisoners lose any privacy because they have been publicly identified and sometimes have already appeared in open court. Kern pointed out that "booking photographs allow the public to piece together other publicly available information in a unique manner. They allow the public to connect a name, criminal charges, and a face. Booking photographs are arguably even more private than rap sheets because the federal mug shot itself is not yet in the public domain at all." He added that "the private information contained in a mug shot has not been somehow previously disclosed based on the indictment and prior judicial proceedings. Instead, a mug shot captures an expression and a moment in time not otherwise available to the public in any other manner." Kern rejected a variety of claims Tulsa World put forth asserting disclosure was in the public interest. He noted that "the Court agrees that uncovering government misconduct would further the core purposes of FOIA. However, this Court concludes that releasing booking photographs does nothing to meaningfully expose government law enforcement officials' conduct to public scrutiny."
Issues: Exemption 7(C) - Invasion of privacy concerning law enforcement records | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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