Pennsylvania Newspaper Loses in Court as Autopsy Ordered Sealed

By: The autopsy report on an Easton police officer fatally shot last year at police headquarters by another officer will remain sealed, a judge has ruled.

The decision was praised Saturday by Lehigh County Coroner Scott Grim, who said the ruling ?recognized the importance of the confidentiality of an autopsy report.?

Commonwealth Court Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt on Friday overturned a lower court ruling that had ordered Grim to make public the autopsy report on Officer Jesse Sollman, 36.

Two newspapers, the Morning Call of Allentown and the Express-Times in Easton, had asked for the report and sued when Grim refused to disclose it.

In March, Lehigh County Judge Edward Reibman ruled in the papers? favor, citing a state Supreme Court decision. Grim appealed in April; Leavitt then overturned Reibman?s decision, meaning the autopsy report will stay sealed.

The case bears similarities to a Delaware court ruling that kept private the autopsy report of a man found dead in his burned-out car in a Rehoboth Beach parking garage.

In April, the Delaware Supreme Court reversed a Chancery Court ruling and granted Duane Lawson?s family a permanent injunction against the release of any autopsy information.

The decision disappointed First Amendment attorneys and appeared to establish a new right of privacy in death, as well as set new limits on what information police departments can share with the public.

Lawson, 40, the co-owner of a Gold?s Gym, was found dead Feb. 15, 2005.

Afterward, Rehoboth Beach police wanted to release information about Lawson?s death in response to requests from news organizations and to quell rumors in the community about the death.

The News Journal had sought the release of the records and filed a separate legal action under the state?s Freedom of Information Act seeking the autopsy records.

But the state Supreme Court ruled in April that because no evidence of criminal wrongdoing was found and because of the 2002 passage of the Health Record Privacy Statute by the Delaware Legislature, the family of someone who has died can prevent the release of information about the death.

In the Pennsylvania case, Sollman was accidentally shot and killed March 25, 2005, in the Easton police station by Officer Matthew Renninger. A grand jury in Harrisburg concluded Renninger was negligent in Sollman?s death but that charges were not warranted. The jury recommended Renninger be fired; he retired in May.

Leavitt based her decision on a ruling she made last year in the case of Johnstown Tribune Co. v. Ross, which involved a similar dispute between a county coroner and a newspaper. In that case, Leavitt ruled that autopsy results are not part of the public record that coroners must file annually with the courts.

She wrote that coroners need only release the cause and manner of death, and that the full autopsy report does not have to be made public because it could contain sensitive medical information and graphic autopsy photographs.

Express-Times Publisher and President Martin Till said Friday that the newspaper will appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.

Morning Call attorney Malcolm J. Gross said the paper is considering whether to appeal.