Constitutional Law

KingCast demands the toxicology report for Norman Bruce McKay in the Franconia shooting tragedy.

By Christopher King

Please provide the full autopsy toxicology/bloodwork analysis reports on Liko Peter Kenney and Norman Bruce McKay based on the rationale set forth in Swickard v. Wayne County Medical Examiner, 438 Mich. 536 (1991)

OVERVIEW: A chief district court judge was found shot to death and the postmortem examination found that the gun shot was self inflicted. A newspaper reporter filed an action which sought disclosure of the coroner's report under the Freedom of Information Act,Mich. Comp. Laws § 15.231 et seq. The trial court ordered disclosure of the report and the appellate court affirmed the trial court. The court affirmed the appellate court and held that the judge's common law privacy rights could not be maintained after his death and the relatives of the deceased who were objects of publicity could not maintain actions for invasion of privacy unless their own privacy was violated. Further, the constitutional right of privacy could be asserted only by the person whose rights had been violated. The court found that no private facts of relatives would be revealed, the report would not reflect upon the lifestyle of any relatives, and the circumstances of the death were a matter of legitimate public concern. Thus, no invasion of privacy was threatened. Further, information acquired during an autopsy fell outside the scope of the physician-patient privilege set out in Mich. Comp. Laws § 600.2157.

And Union Leader Corp. v. City of Nashua, 141 N.H. 473 (1996), which led the Concord Monitor to write the following in this 16 May 2007 editorial, a year to the day:

Legal precedent also justifies the videotape's release. In 1994, to investigate whether the police declined to prosecute a drunken driver because he was the son of a U.S. senator from New Hampshire, the state Supreme Court ruled that the value of being able to measure the performance of a public agency outweighed the privacy rights claimed by the defendant.

In this case, the privacy rights of Officer McKay and Kenney died with them. Floyd has been cleared of wrongdoing, so there's no one left to prosecute or to try. The burden of proof is on the attorney general to justify nondisclosure. None of the factors cited by the Supreme Court to justify keeping evidence secret appear to apply in this case. Too much time has elapsed with the facts in doubt.

Look what else the Concord Monitor asked inside the comments, and note that I'm already leery of the coroner because:
Page 455 Brand new Patrolman Phillip Blanchard proves the autopsy is biased: Autopsy reads "faint, oily residue on right side of face," but Blanchard says "he had a brown complexion all over (emphasis added) his face and part of his neck." Anyone seeing that plume of OC Spray would clearly know the autopsy statement was bunk.

Full post as published by Chris King's 1st Amendment Page on May 16, 2008 (boomark / email).