Obtaining Police Personnel Files to Support Your Criminal Defense Case
If you have been arrested and charged with a crime, and you observed some form of misconduct on the part of the arresting officer – whether it was the use of excessive force, a violation of your civil rights, or you suspect that they might have planted or tampered with evidence – you may wonder if that officer has a history of similar kinds of offenses. When you as an accused criminal are accusing an officer of the law who has sworn to uphold the law of making false statements or acting in illegal or inappropriate manner, it is essentially your word against that of the officer. With no other witnesses or video evidence, you might be able to review that officer’s personnel records to see if there is a possibility that they have been accused of the same kind of conduct in the past.
Gaining access to police personnel records in Tennessee
The Digital Media Law Project has a section on their website with details about how to access public records in every state in the United States. Each state has its own rules about what information the public can have access to, and each has their own process for accessing that information.
In Tennessee, citizens of the state can request public records with the exception of those that are exempt from disclosure. The Tennessee Open Records Act includes specific exemptions for what public records will not be available to the public. If you are looking for a law enforcement officer’s personnel files, there are special rules and procedures for requesting them. Under Tenn. Code Ann. § 10-7-503(c)(1)-(3), you must provide the following: Name, address, telephone number (home and work) and your driver’s license number and the date you inspected the records. The custodian will record this information and give it to the officer.
When you are making the request, the custodian will ask and you must answer if you are requesting the records for professional or official purpose. You should be able to view the records during regular business hours. If it is not practical for the records to be made available on the day you request them, they must be made available within 7 days. If they are not made available within 7 days, the custodian must give you a reason for their not being available or deny your request.
If you are a citizen of Tennessee and you have been denied access to public records, you can petition for judicial review in the county where the records are kept. If the court finds that the agency willfully refused to disclose a public record, it may charge the agency reasonable costs including attorney fees.
If you have been charged with a crime and you believe that officer misconduct was a factor in your arrest, you will need an aggressive Franklin criminal defense attorney on your side. You may contact the Law Offices of Adrian H. Altshuler & Associates right away. One of our Franklin criminal defense lawyers will defend your rights. We also have offices in Brentwood and Columbia to serve you.