Innocence group sues to get case file

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

Columbus police are improperly shielding the complete files of a long-closed criminal case, according to a public-records lawsuit that contends police around the state increasingly refuse to release such records until all chance of appeals is exhausted, usually because the defendant is dead.

At issue is an attempt by the Ohio Innocence Project to review the case of a man sentenced to 38 years in prison for killing a woman in 2005. The project doesn’t represent defendant Adam Saleh but wants to review the records, which Saleh alleges will bolster his claim that he didn’t do it.

The broader issue, according to the lawsuit, is that police departments are wrongly interpreting prior court rulings when it comes to the public’s right to get information about closed cases.

The agencies are using their interpretation “to rationalize blanket denials of public-records requests by both criminal defendants and members of the general public,” according to the lawsuit by Cincinnati attorney Donald Caster.

A 2000 appeals court ruling said police aren’t obligated to release the files without proof that no further appeals are possible, “e.g., the defendant’s death.”

The suit says changes in Ohio Supreme Court evidence rules have addressed concerns raised by older court rulings regarding the release of case files. The lawsuit wants the court to order Columbus to make the records immediately available.

The court referred the case to mediation. The city attorney’s office declined comment.

Because Saleh’s conviction was based in part on the testimony of several jailhouse informants, Saleh contends that a full review of the case could exonerate him, according to the lawsuit. The Innocence Project does not represent Saleh and hasn’t made any decision about his innocence claim, the filing said.

Ohio is not alone in restricting the release of police records, but many states, including Florida, Georgia and Idaho, generally require the release of closed files, according to research by Martin Yant, a Columbus private investigator who has sought records in Ohio and around the country on behalf of defense attorneys’ clients.

Saleh, 27, was convicted in the death of aspiring model Julie Popovich, last seen leaving a bar near the Ohio State University campus in August 2005. The skeletal remains of the 20-year-old woman were found three weeks later by landscape workers in a field near a reservoir in suburban Westerville.

Suggesting Saleh is innocent is a “gross misrepresentation” of the evidence against him, said Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien.

Saleh was seen leaving a bar with the woman shortly before she disappeared, made cellphone calls that night within a mile of where her body was discovered and wrote letters to people trying to set up phony alibis, O’Brien said.

Releasing police files as public records raises a host of problems, beginning with the possibility of threats against informants whose names are revealed, O’Brien said. New appeals always are a possibility in such cases, he added.

O’Brien also said he has worked frequently with Innocence Project attorneys to share information about cases where innocence is a possibility.

“I don’t want anybody in jail that doesn’t belong in jail,” he said.