Bucking prior decisions across the state that California’s new police transparency law requires disclosure of officer misconduct cases from past years, a Ventura County Superior Court judge ruled this week that Senate Bill 1421 cannot be applied “retroactively.”
Judge Henry J. Walsh’s decision stands in stark contrast to rulings by other jurists up and down the state, from Contra Costa County to San Diego, who have found the law requires the release of internal documents about police use of force, dishonesty, and sexual assault cases regardless of when the incidents occurred.
Finding “clear public interest” in the records at issue, Walsh nevertheless ruled that the law does not explicitly say it applies to misconduct and shootings that took place before the law took effect on Jan. 1, a police union argument rejected in other courtrooms.
“If that public interest is so pervasive,” Walsh wrote in his June 19 ruling, “it needs to be converted into legislative action.”
First Amendment lawyers were quick to criticize Walsh. One attorney representing several Southern California news organizations in a statewide effort to obtain and report on the newly unsealed records called Walsh’s decision “fundamentally flawed,” noting the judge ignored strong precedent from higher courts established since the beginning of the year.
“This is contrary to every trial court decision in the state, a denial of review by the Second District Court of Appeal, a published opinion by the First District Court of Appeal, and two denials of review by the California Supreme Court,” attorney Kelly Avila wrote in an emailed response to Walsh’s ruling.
Every other court considering the issue found the San Francisco-based First District Court of Appeals’ March ruling on the so-called “retroactivity” of the law applied statewide, Avila wrote.
“Why Judge Walsh ignored it is a mystery,” Avila wrote.
“To call this order an outlier doesn’t begin to describe it,” David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, wrote in an email. “The (Ventura) court doesn’t even try to explain why it’s not following the higher court — it simply says, contrary to fact, that there is no Court of Appeal decision. I don’t know what to call it other than bizarre.”
The Ventura case pitted the county public defender against a union representing deputy sheriffs, which had sued to stop the release of records, claiming the law covers only disciplinary cases brought after Jan. 1.
“We respectfully disagree with Judge Walsh,” Senior Deputy Public Defender Michael McMahon said Friday. He said he was “profoundly disappointed” that the ruling glosses over the controlling state appeals court decision, a point he raised it in the case several times.
McMahon said the public defender’s office is still considering whether it will file an appeal.
Michael Rains, an East Bay lawyer whose firm represented the police unions in their efforts to block access to older records, did not respond to a message Friday.
The state appeals court considered the arguments after KQED, the Bay Area News Group, the Center for Investigative Reporting and Investigative Studios, an arm of UC Berkeley’s Investigative Reporting Program, intervened to force the release of records from a half dozen cities in Contra Costa County.
All other trial decisions have gone in favor of news organizations who have filed lawsuits to enforce Senate Bill 1421’s application to pre-2019 records. The records so far released have shown cops disciplined or fired for everything from smashing a state-hospital patient’s face into a wall, to stealing tens of thousands of bullets from a police armory to officers committing serious sexual misconduct.
