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After weeks of delay, Davidson County Chancellor I’Ashea Myles ruled that the Covenant School shooter’s writings would not be released. She filed her order in a 60-page ruling released at 11:58 p.m. Thursday night, July 4.
On March 27, 2023, three children and three adults were killed by a lone shooter at the Covenant School. Since then, a contentious yearlong legal battle has taken place over the release of documents related to the shooting, including the journal of the assailant. More than two months after a two-day hearing in April, Myles ruled that while documents related to the investigation should be released under the Tennessee Public Records Act, the Metro Nashville Police Department is correct in withholding those documents until the conclusion of its investigation. Additionally, Myles ruled that the shooter’s writings, on which much of the legal battle has been focused, should not be released.
Petitioners push judge on public records exemption in first day of hearings
“It’s a terrible ruling for transparency,” says Deb Fisher, the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government’s executive director.
The case is widely expected to go before the Tennessee Court of Appeals.
While MNPD has said from the beginning that the documents could be released upon the conclusion of their investigation, families of the Covenant victims intervened in the case as a third party to argue that in an effort to prevent further harm to the survivors, as well as possible copycat shooters, the writings should never be released.
The investigation, which MNPD initially said would conclude in June, is ongoing. An MNPD spokesperson tells the Nashville Banner that there is no estimated end time but that “detectives are working to reach a conclusion.” They declined to comment on Myles’ ruling.
On the other side of the issue, The Tennessean, Tennessee Firearms Association, Tennessee Star and others argued that MNPD’s denial of their requests for copies of the documents represent a breach of the Tennessee Public Records Act.
Myles pointed to two reasons for denying the release of the shooter’s writings: federal copyright law and exemptions from the Tennessee Public Records Act for documents related to school security.
“Some information, which the Court finds most concerning, in relation to school security, is the detailing of specific plans and specified places and persons that assailant [Audrey] Hale intended to succumb to injury upon plan implementation,” writes Myles. “Of grave concern to this Court is that the assailant in this incident relied on similar past events across the United States as a blueprint to accomplish and carry out the events on March 27, 2023.”
Throughout court proceedings, both sides brought in experts to testify as to whether the possibility of copycat shootings was a valid argument for keeping the shooter’s writings concealed from the public.
Myles wrote that she found the expert brought in by the Covenant families more convincing, and went on to say that her in-camera review of the documents in question — which included hundreds of gigabytes of original videos, 911 communications, email communications, incident reports, clip art, receipts and mail, medical records, search warrants, original writings, news content, internal MNPD documents, original photos and maps — left her further convinced that the release of the shooter’s writings and other materials would present a danger to school security.
“Hale studied the plans, writings and video content, inclusive of news coverage footage, of past assailants and idolized how prior terror events were conducted and implemented and the outcomes for both the victims and assailants,” writes Myles. “Hale used the writings of other perpetrators in similar crimes to guide how this plan was constructed and accomplished, mimicking some not only in their methodology, but also choice of weapons and targets. Hale even held past perpetrators out as heroes in their attacks, idolizing them.”
The Covenant families applauded the ruling.
What began as a show-cause hearing for the Tennessee Star ended with a dozen lawyers all asking for Chancellor Myles to release her decision
“This opinion is an important first step to making sure the killer can’t hurt our babies anymore,” says Dr. Erin Kinney, mother of Covenant shooting victim Will Kinney. “The importance is even more clear due to the leaking of stolen police documents, which has violated our parental right to protect our traumatized and grieving children from material that could destroy their lives. We are more resolved than ever to fight to keep our children and everyone’s children safe from this murderer.”
But Fisher was left unimpressed by Myles’ reasoning.
“She applied that [exemption] very broadly,” says Fisher. “And I do believe the school security exemption is supposed to be things like, ‘We don’t want other people to know how to break into this school,’ right? That’s really what that’s about. It’s not about, ‘Hey, this person did this crazy thing, and other people want to be a copycat.’”
Fisher argued that the copycat argument is inconsistent and that, if anything, security camera footage of the shooter, which was released by MNPD just days after the shooting, never should have seen the light of day.
One of the more novel aspects of this case came when the Covenant families revealed that the parents of the shooter had transferred ownership of all materials created by the shooter to them. They argued that this gave them a copyright claim on the materials, and that their release would represent a copyright infringement. Myles agreed.
“Compliance with the request of the Petitioners as to the original works of authorship, derivative works and compilations as set forth in 17 United States Code Annotated §§ 101, 102 and 103, created by Hale, would require [Metro] to infringe upon the exclusive federal copyright protections afforded to the copyright owners,” writes Myles.
Myles determined that federal copyright law preempts the Tennessee Public Records Act, and that Metro releasing the documents would be an infringement.
“That ruling is going to be problematic because it opens the door for criminals and or maybe survivors of criminals — like spouses — to keep confidential any writings or audio recordings or videos or suicide notes that talk about their intent,” says Fisher. “This could allow for cover-ups.”
Fisher worries that Myles’ copyright ruling could become a precedent, opening the door to all sorts of documents that she says should be released to the public becoming copyrighted and kept confidential.
“It’s stunning that the judge would decide that evidence of a crime can be copyrighted and held confidential,” says Fisher. “Police collect all kinds of things that could be copyrighted — video, audio, text messages.”
