From Hartford Courant: The secretly drafted bill that would give Newtown massacre victims' families the power to veto disclosure of some investigative records might create a broader precedent — because future crime victims' families could ask for the same power in their less-celebrated cases, the head of the state Freedom of Information Commission said Thursday.
The language of the controversial bill applies only to records compiled in the investigation of the Dec. 14 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, such as tapes of 911 emergency calls and crime-scene photos.
"But whenever you carve out an exception like this" in a bill, it can spawn requests on behalf of victims in future criminal cases — creating a "fairness question" if they aren't granted the same consideration, Colleen Murphy, executive director of the FOI commission, said in an interview Thursday.