Wednesday, January 11, 2017

PROSECUTING ATTORNEY TRIES TO WIGGLE OUT OF COMPLYING WITH LEGAL FOI REQUEST

Monday we posted a story about David Ethredge, the Prosecuting Attorney for the 14th Judicial District and how he was breaking the law by not providing information subject to a Freedom of Information request.

Late this afternoon we received an email from his office that contained this letter as an attachment.




As you can see the letter was dated with today's date and states that my request involves a judge.  

The letter also invites the publisher of this blog to attend a hearing, but gives the date of the hearing as January 6th, last Friday! 

If there is a hearing and it involves the FOI request made by the publisher of this blog, then it is not proper notification and violates the Arkansas Rules of Civil Procedure.

Readers will recall that we actually requested a copy of the case file his office had on a criminal case not filings made.  

This letter is evidence that Ethredge does not understand the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act.

When we requested a copy of the file the Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney had on Erica Suskie, that office promptly responded and provided use with a full copy of their file.  You can see it in a post we made back in August 2016.

That file did not have copies of any pleadings the Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney filed in the Suskie matter. There were copies of filing made in District Court, but none of the Circuit Court pleadings were included.

Any information about a minor victim is to be redacted from these requested documents, as did the Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney in their response to you FOI request.

The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act requires that even if there is exempt information in requested documents, that "any reasonably segregable portion of a record shall be provided after deletion of the exempt information".

 

The Attorney General's Opinion Ethredge listed deals with minor victims. Anyone with any knowledge whatsoever of the Arkansas FOI Act know that minors names redacted in requests of this sort.  You shouldn't have to go before a judge to have that confirmed. Besides, we never asked for the name of the victim.  Ethredge must be a geniune dumb-ass.

  

This is the Arkansas Code he referenced.
 





Duh, anyone with one eye and half a brain knows this.  Again, we did not ask the victims names and do not expect it to be released in response to this FOI request.

This the the Supreme Court Order he mentioned, actually it is an administrative order of the courts.

 

We must point out that Order 19 clearly states that the file maintained by Ethredge is not subject to the order, the damn fool just has to redact the victim(s) names and identifying information.

 

Again, we ask what is Ethredge trying to cover-up? 

Stay tuned for updates.