Constitutional – Right of Access to Video Footage – First Amendment

Defendant police officer failed to demonstrate why her right to a fair trial justifies maintaining the seal on the video exhibits and to show why the sealing order is narrowly tailored to serve that interest.

We affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded with instructions.

Plaintiff, a North Carolina police officer, sued fellow police officer Defendant after she shot him several times during the execution of a search warrant. As one would imagine, the parties’ accounts of what occurred on the night of the shooting differ markedly. Video footage of the shooting offers a third perspective. Yet this video footage is unavailable for public viewing because it has been shielded indefinitely from the media and the public eye by order of the district court.

Appellant is a Charlotte-based television station that seeks access to this video footage. After covering the shooting and the events surrounding it, Appellant filed a motion to intervene in Plaintiff’s lawsuit and a motion to unseal the video. After determining that it lacked jurisdiction, the district court denied Appellant’s motion to intervene. The district court then ruled in the alternative on Appellant’s motion to unseal, denying that motion as well. It concluded that Appellant had no right of access to the video footage arising under either the common law or the First Amendment. The district court further ruled that even if Appellant could properly assert a common law or First Amendment right of access to the video, Defendant’s right to a fair trial outweighed any interest of Appellant’s in its unsealing.

We agreed that the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear Appellant’s motion to intervene and affirm the district court’s order denying that motion. We construed Appellant’s appeal from the district court’s denial of its motion to unseal as a petition for a writ of mandamus and granted the writ. On the motion to unseal, Defendant bore the burden to demonstrate why her right to a fair trial justifies maintaining the seal on the video exhibits and to show why the sealing order is narrowly tailored to serve that interest. She has not met this burden. We therefore vacated the order of the district court sealing the video exhibits. The sealing order violates the First Amendment right of access of both the press and the public.

The district court’s order sealing the video footage violated the well-established rights of the press and of the public to access judicial documents and records. We therefore vacated in part and reversed in part the order of the district court and remanded with instructions to unseal the video footage at issue.

Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded.

Gray Media Group Inc. v. Loveridge (Lawyers’ Weekly No. 001-160-25, 16 pp.) (Nicole G. Berner, J.) Appealed from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina at Charlotte (Max O. Cogburn, Jr., J.) ARGUED: Lauren Patricia Russell, BALLARD SPAHR, LLP, Washington, D.C., for Appellant. Steven Andrew Bader, CRANFILL SUMNER, LLP, Raleigh, North Carolina, for Appellee. ON BRIEF: Stephanie H. Webster, CRANFILL SUMNER LLP, Charlotte, North Carolina, for Appellee. U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit