Laura Schultes
- University of Arizona 2009
- Worked in Chile with human rights work
More writing and oral argument than trials
What we want
Documents from the Cedar Rapids Police
Department Related to 2015 and 2016
Shooting incidents
As a Litigant in a lawsuit (the one they were on)
- Request Documents through the “discovery process”
- Broad right to discovery (anything relevant to your claim)
- Only limited for “good cause”
- Limitation requested: Keep the documents confidential
As a member of the public
- Request through Iowa’s open records law
- Broad right to access “public documents”
- Limitations on disclosure established by Statute
- Iowa Code 22.7
Their proposal was that everything be filed under seal. This protects it from public disclosure.
Protective order is identical to the the Burlington one.
- The city used this protective order wanting to use it in the cedar rapids shooting case
City’s Argument
- There is no “good cause” for limiting discovery and forcing us to keep them confidentia
- The documents we want are NOT covered by 22.7
Does the open records law give the court guidance on what to do?
Questions for the Court
- Is this “good cause” for limiting discovery and forcing us to keep them confidential?
Iowa Code 22.7
- “The following public records shall be kept confidential, unless otherwise ordered by a court, by the lawful custodian of the records, or by another person duly authorized to release such information:”
5. Peace officers’ investigative reports, privileged records or information specified in section 80G.2, and specific portions of electronic mail and telephone billing records of law enforcement agencies… IF that information is part of an ongoing investigation
Do the documents we want clearly and unambiguously fall within the explicit language of this statute?
Hawkeye case was exactly like theirs
Interesting thing in prep of the argument..
- Atlantic was a 4-3 decision. 4 were for, 3 against.
- 2 of the justices are gone
- 1 new judge
- 3 justices really don’t like how Atlantic turned out
Did any of the judges catch you off guard?
- Asked 1 question about the 80G.2, she didn’t do much research on it but she was able to answer something at least by what had already been said about it 15 minutes earlier
In terms of preparation, originally I think this all came up in the summer of 2017. I want to say it was august or september of that year that we had a hearing with the district court judge.
Local Council = Her
- Firm in Chicago is partnered with them behalf of the Mitchells
What happens next is when they get the supreme court position (which she says could be a couple months)
- Once they have that decision, they’ll see what it says. It may be very clear as to what they have to do, and it might just send the case back down to fight it down in district court
- These battles could definitely be continued.
- NEXT– get supreme court decision and use that as guidance
Case set for trial in 2020
Who pays legal fees?
- They work for free unless they win.
- “We take cases and nobody pays us anything”
- “If there is a pot of money to be had, our fee is ⅓ of the amount of recovery. We reimburse ourselves back for the expenses. Sometimes we have to pay for the persons medical treatment.”
- Have NOT made any money on this case
District court order was narrow.
- It said the city has to give plaintiffs the police investigative reports for the 48 hours after the shooting.
- This includes cell phone records and video footage. Did not say anything about officer personnel files etc.
She knows the reporter covering this case. (Trish Mahathy)
- “I thought the media coverage was overall good”
- Did good job boiling it down to what the average person reading the newspaper is going to digest
Lots of clients have this idea of what justice means and a lot of times the courts just can’t give them that because the justice system has limitations. “It can’t make them whole again”
The reason the burden is on the city: if you are a litigant the rules of discovery are very broad. The law says it’s their job.
- The court wanted to figure out if there was really a harm in keeping the records confidential.
- “The undercurrent of this is, the city, if you read their brief.. They’re sort of hinting at this fact that we might leak everything out to the public.” “I think the court has that at the back of their mind”
The public trust is increased if the public can see what’s going on.
Whatever the court decides, it will become the law. It sets out a new standard.
Rich Greenlee
- He was the police sheriff when 2 young women were killed in Waverly in the 70s
- He was on the watch while this happened
- Regrets of Rich’s career is that we have not found the killer yet
- One girl’s family is deceased
Retired from the Bremer co sheriff’s office
- When he first started he had to have his own car and his own weapons
- A few months later they bought them squad cars
- A year later they got weapons
- First co squad car→ The red light on the top wouldn’t swirl around in the cold, it would just stay red. He says “we looked like rudolf the red nosed reindeer”
- Started working in traffic and the jail. Back in those days they ran the jails, there were no jailers
- 3 deputies in bremer county plus the sheriff at this time
- He only made $600 per month
- Worked nights for 3 years
While he went to hawkeye they had their first homicide
- Body found a mile into butler county
- Sheriff of Butler county was old fashioned and did not want to work the case. Because she was missing from Waverly they got involved handling the case.
- Julia Benning = girl murdered
On Nov. 28, 1975, the day after spending Thanksgiving with her parents, Julia was seen walking to work. But then, she disappeared.
- 18 years old
- Assumed she was strangled
- Her body was in the ditch for 6 months and frozen
- Very hard to tell what the actual cause of death was
- Popular young girl
- Mother very bitter toward law enforcement
He put photos of the two girls on the filing cabinet because he wanted to think of this each day until he solved the case
1976 Lisa Peak Reported missing from Wartberg
- Found in a field driveway
- 24-46 hours that the body was there
- “Rich you know we are both getting older with age and we woud both like some closure on this before we both die” – Lisa’s mother
- There’s new testing out now that they’re hoping to use to get some DNA off of to try and find the killer
Did one person kill both girls?
- Not sure, but they’re both found very similar
- Lisa peak found sexually assaulted
- Both of them were found within 2 miles of the Waverly limits
- “As a police officer you probably want to think it was the same killer that killed both girls, but you can’t look at it that way because you’ll get tunnel vision”
- These two cases are still active and in Rich’s brain
It is very possible that the killer could be dead because Rich is 72.
Julie’s Diary – missing pages from the month she went missing
Journalism, Law, & Ethics 