OLYMPIA — Prisoners are entitled to government records, but jailers can keep those records from actually reaching an inmate’s hands if the information is deemed illegal contraband, a divided state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
The 5-4 ruling could have broader implications for the way officials treat Public Records Act requests from people behind bars in Washington.
In particular, the ruling seems to conflict with recent legal arguments made by Attorney General Rob McKenna, who contends in a separate case that convicted felons have fewer rights than regular citizens when it comes to getting access to public information.
At issue in Thursday’s ruling was a Public Records Act request from Michael B. Livingston, who was serving time for armed robbery when he requested the training records of a corrections officer. Livingston has since been released.
The Department of Corrections sent Livingston copies of the requested records, but they were intercepted in the mailroom of the Cedar Creek Corrections Center in Thurston County. Cedar Creek officials then told Livingston he wasn’t allowed to receive records about employees of the prisons agency, but could have them forwarded to someone else who was not in custody.
Livingston sued, claiming the Corrections Department was improperly using its contraband mail policy to block legitimate requests for public records.
But the Supreme Court’s majority disagreed, saying the agency fulfilled its responsibility under the Public Records Act when it collected and sent the records to Livingston.
The same agency’s interception of the records in its prison mailroom has no bearing on the state’s compliance with the open records law, since contraband mail policy is meant solely to regulate the security of the prison — a subject on which courts give great deference to prison administrators.
“The Public Records Act does not limit the department’s discretion in prohibiting entry of public records that it reasonably deems inappropriate in a prison setting,” Justice Barbara Madsen wrote for the majority. Joining her were Chief Justice Gerry Alexander and Justices Bobbe Bridge, Mary Fairhurst and Charles Johnson.
It would be different, the majority said, if the Corrections Department had denied Livingston’s public records request based solely on the fact that he was an inmate.
But the agency prepared and sent the materials as it should have, Madsen wrote. It was the prisons’ separate security policy, not its public records policy, that led to the records being confiscated, and that’s allowable, the court found.
The court’s dissenters, led by Justice James Johnson, said prison contraband regulations should not be allowed to block public records requests because the Public Records Act has a broad mandate in favor of disclosure: “In the event of conflict between the provisions of this act and any other act, the provisions of this act shall govern.”
“Since making records available and withholding them are mutually incompatible, the laws conflict, and the Public Records Act controls,” Johnson wrote.
Minority justices did agree, however, that “agencies must treat a prisoner like any other person requesting a public record.”
Such recognition of an inmate’s general right to receive public records is significant, particularly in light of McKenna’s arguments to the contrary in a separate high-profile case also dealing with an inmate’s access to public records.
That case involves Allan Parmelee, who was convicted of first-degree arson in 2004 for firebombing the vehicles of lawyers representing his ex-wife and another woman.
While in prison, Parmelee has made hundreds of requests, seeking addresses, photos, salaries, schedules, professional histories and birthdates of state troopers and Corrections Department staff. Several jurisdictions have disputed Parmelee’s rights to the records.
In a brief filed last month with the state Court of Appeals, McKenna — a noted advocate of public-access laws — asserts that felons who haven’t had their rights restored after serving time shouldn’t have full access to government information.
Allowing Parmelee equal access under the Public Records Act is “fundamentally inconsistent with the objectives, needs and realities of the prison system and the legal status of inmates,” McKenna wrote.
Dan Sytman, a spokesman for McKenna, said Thursday that the Supreme Court’s ruling likely wouldn’t be a significant hurdle to the attorney general’s arguments in the Parmelee case, since the high court wasn’t directly considering that issue alone.
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