Why were warrants sealed in UVa slaying?

In the midst of a feeding frenzy by national media outlets, local officials sealed search warrant inventories detailing the items police seized during searches related to the killing of a University of Virginia lacrosse player.

That means, in layman’s terms, that only people involved with the case can see them.

The documents relate to the slaying of Yeardley Love, a 22-year-old fourth-year student whose body was discovered by her roommate early Monday. Her bedroom door had been forced open and she was face down on a bloody pillow, with a bruised face, according to court documents.

George Huguely, a 22-year-old fourth-year lacrosse player, has been charged with first-degree murder.

Ordinarily, search warrant inventories and other such documents are open for inspection on request at the Charlottesville Circuit Court Clerk’s office.

“A judge’s order seals it, then it’s sealed, and it’s pretty much that simple,” said Alan Gernhardt, staff attorney at the Virginia Freedom of Information Advisory Council.

Charlottesville police Lt. Gary Pleasants said the move also prevented the department from discussing the contents of the documents.

“When something is sealed, it is sealed from view by court order, but it also means that we are by court order unable to speak about … its contents in any fashion,” he said.

In Virginia, a judge, at the request of a commonwealth’s attorney, can seal warrant-related documents.

Pleasants said the sealing of warrants isn’t an everyday occurrence. When it does happen, it’s often in drug cases, he said.

While a commonwealth’s attorney can unilaterally ask to seal documents, the prosecutor sometimes does so at the request of police, Pleasants said.

It wasn’t clear where the impetus to close the lacrosse documents had come from.

Though unable to comment on the lacrosse case specifically, Megan Rhyne, executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government, said common reasons for sealing documents include worries that facts included in the papers will put an investigation in jeopardy or taint a jury pool.

“Shutting things down at such an early stage can sometimes be an overreaction,” Rhyne said. “I don’t know that that’s the case now.”

Jack Toomey, a retired investigator from Montgomery County in Maryland, said he suspects the commonwealth’s attorney is worried about having trouble finding an unbiased jury if a trial is held in Charlottesville.

“The more people that know about the evidence, the more people that form an opinion,” he said.

Al Tompkins, who teaches journalism ethics at the Poynter Institute, said other reasons include fears that the documents would reveal informants or undercover officers, contain juvenile records or detail information that’s “squishy,” he said.

Other times, he said, a list of seized items might include a large quantity of useless information.

“Sometimes police go into a scene and just are vacuuming up everything, and it may or may not mean anything,” he said. “The stuff that they seize … can take a little while to get … sorted out. That said, the citizens of your community have an interest in having the records open as soon as possible, so that they can weigh the strength of evidence behind the arrest and charges. That’s one thing that differentiates our system from the Canadian system or the British system, both of which have severe restrictions on how much you can report prior to a trial.”

The Daily Progress obtained one of the inventories before it was sealed. It revealed that police found a red-stained UVa lacrosse shirt at Huguely’s apartment, as well as computers and a letter to Love, among other items. The media has so far been unable to get copies of the inventories from a search of Love’s apartment and a search of Huguely’s body.

Tompkins argued that it’s important for the public to know about evidence before a trial because so many cases never make it to that stage, ending in plea deals or dismissed charges.

He also argued that publicity doesn’t necessarily preclude finding an unbiased jury.

“This is one of the great fallacies — that we have to keep communities ignorant in order to have a fair trial,” he said.

He pointed to O.J. Simpson’s murder trial as an example of a case where a defendant was acquitted after intense media coverage.

And he said that the tempo of coverage will inevitably slow.

“It won’t be that intense forever,” he said. “I mean, it’s intense now because it’s news now, but a case like this takes a long time to get to trial.”