A trio of newspapers filed a challenge in a Charlottesville court Friday, asking a judge to unseal a court order in the University of Virginia lacrosse case.
A judge earlier this week sealed search warrants executed as part of the investigation into the death of Yeardley Love, 22, a fourth-year UVa student. George Huguely, 22 and also a fourth-year, has been charged with first-degree murder in her death. The Daily Progress, the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Washington Post are mounting the challenge.
The sealed documents are thought to include returned warrants from searches of Huguely’s apartment, Love’s apartment and Huguely’s body. The back of each warrant should contain an inventory of items seized during the searches.
The order sealing the warrants was also sealed.
It is the sealing of the order itself that the newspapers are challenging.
“The sealing of the very order that accomplishes the closing of the judicial record defeats that process, and removes the public’s ... right of access before it can be evaluated, much less asserted, in a particular case,” the challenge reads.
But their petition alludes to the possibility of challenging the seal on the returned warrants, once the papers know why the documents have been sealed.
“[U]ntil the sealing order and the basis for its entry can be made public and understood, the substantive arguments in opposition to sealing [the warrants] cannot fairly be offered,” the challenge reads.
Daily Progress Publisher Lawrence L. McConnell said it is important that judicial proceedings be conducted as transparently as possible.
“Access to documents like court orders and law enforcement public records is one of the cornerstones of a free society,” McConnell said.
“Public confidence in the judicial process is directly related to the openness with which criminal justice proceedings are recorded and conducted. The information and documents we are seeking are legally public to begin with. We believe it’s in the public interest to request some official, legal justification when those items are sealed by a court from public inspection,” he said.
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