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Speaker 1: In legal news today, Dylan Roof has pled guilty to

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Speaker 1: state murder charges for the June two thousand, fifteen South

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Speaker 1: Carolina church massacre. It allows him to avoid a second

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Speaker 1: death sentence on the state charges. Police reform and civil

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Speaker 1: liberties advocates have advocated for body cameras on police officers

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Speaker 1: and dashboard cameras on police cars, with the idea that

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Speaker 1: video recordings would deter the excessive use of police force

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Speaker 1: and provide evidence when they are allegations that it happened.

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Speaker 1: But last year in North Carolina passed a law that

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Speaker 1: prevents the release of these kinds of recordings, except in

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Speaker 1: limited circumstances. The law is now facing its first significant

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Speaker 1: test after Greensboro police arrested a teenager for assault and

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Speaker 1: resisting arrest earlier this month, and the teenager's mother wants

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Speaker 1: video of the incident viewed by the entire city. Our

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Speaker 1: guest to talk about this issue is Mary Fan, a

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Speaker 1: professor at the University of Washington School of Law who

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Speaker 1: has written extensively on criminal justice and issues surrounding the

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Speaker 1: use of body camps on police officers. Mary, it's good

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Speaker 1: to have you here. Um, what does this North Carolina

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Speaker 1: law do The North Carolina law restricts access to recording

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Speaker 1: UH made via body cams unless you're actually on that video,

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Speaker 1: or or your or your representative of someone who's on

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Speaker 1: that video. There is a provision that allows other people

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Speaker 1: to petition to the court upon a showing of you know,

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Speaker 1: some compelling interests. There's a number of factors that the

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Speaker 1: courts can consider, um. But there's is a court process

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Speaker 1: to seek the video as well. So in this case,

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Speaker 1: you have a young man who has been charged. He

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Speaker 1: and his mother have seen the video. Is that video

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Speaker 1: allowed to be used at his trial? The video can

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Speaker 1: be used against him at his trial? Um? Yes, Well

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Speaker 1: do we know if it can be if it's against him,

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Speaker 1: or if it might help him. Now I'm telling that

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Speaker 1: the police might not be releasing it because it doesn't

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Speaker 1: work for them. That's well the yes, it could be.

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Speaker 1: We don't know because they don't have the video, right, Um.

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Speaker 1: And there there may well be uh factors that support

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Speaker 1: um the prosecution, and there may well be factors that

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Speaker 1: support the defense. We just don't know. Well, Mary, you

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Speaker 1: know a lot of people when in the issues that

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Speaker 1: have come up in policing across the country, the last

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Speaker 1: couple of years have talked about wanting bodycams on police

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Speaker 1: officers so that when you have excessive force allegations are

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Speaker 1: wrongful arrest allegations, the public can know whether or not

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Speaker 1: in fact there is a problem in a particular case,

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Speaker 1: and they can kind of see the video of what happened.

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Speaker 1: Why What's North Carolina? Is rationale for restricting the the

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Speaker 1: ability of the public to see videos like this privacy.

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Speaker 1: One word privacy, and so that's the that's that's the

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Speaker 1: oft cited rationale, privacy. Now we all know that there

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Speaker 1: are other important reasons. There are other concerns as well

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Speaker 1: that law enforcement agencies have um with respect to the

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Speaker 1: release of videos. But the word that you hear often

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Speaker 1: is privacy. Who is the privacy of the people who

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Speaker 1: may be captured on camera, the privacy of the officers

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Speaker 1: who are involved. But we were we also know, of

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Speaker 1: course that there's concerns with the um uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: prejudging a case. Videos only show you know, part of

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Speaker 1: the story, potentially not all the facts, etcetera. So there's

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Speaker 1: a lot of concern with managing um the story and

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Speaker 1: also potential for the incendiary nature of fun videos to

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Speaker 1: manage that as well. But if if this goes to try,

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Speaker 1: I understand from what I've read that there is pressure

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Speaker 1: on him to plead and he has some kinds of

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Speaker 1: mental disability. At least his mother does not want him

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Speaker 1: to to plead and says that he's not guilty. And

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Speaker 1: so if there is a trial, though, he will be

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Speaker 1: able to use that video if he wants to. If

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Speaker 1: there this is um in standard criminal practice, UM, you

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Speaker 1: are entitled to the evidence that the law enforcement that

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Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies have against you, um um, so that

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Speaker 1: you can use it in your defense. So that's standard

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Speaker 1: law enforcement practice. Of course, with body camera videos, you

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Speaker 1: know these this is this is it's not an unprecedented terrain,

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Speaker 1: but it's a newer terrain for courts. What I just

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Speaker 1: don't understand is the reason for these videos is so

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Speaker 1: that there can be transparency, so that everyone can look

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Speaker 1: and see what happened and judge and I and everyone

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Speaker 1: realizes that it's not perfect. There are different angles. We've

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Speaker 1: seen a lot of those, those demonstrations. But why did

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Speaker 1: the j what was his reason for blocking the release

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Speaker 1: of the video? So um, With respect of blocking and

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Speaker 1: release the video, there there are a number of factors

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Speaker 1: that the North Carolina law UM specifies things like privacy,

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Speaker 1: things like the interests of the officer, things like um

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Speaker 1: UM timing and proper timing and other sort of open

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Speaker 1: ended factors risk of UM. So, so you know, there's

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Speaker 1: it's a balance of these factors, and frankly, because they're

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Speaker 1: so open ended, because there are several factors in the end,

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Speaker 1: really highly discretionary decision called by the judge, you know,

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Speaker 1: Mary the Earth Carolina is kind of classifying these as

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Speaker 1: personnel records, right, and that that's why they're treating it

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Speaker 1: this way, so, which doesn't necessarily, I think to a

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Speaker 1: lot of people feel into the intuitive way one should

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Speaker 1: look at this kind of record. How are other states

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Speaker 1: or jurisdictions dealing with this question? Right now, there's split,

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Speaker 1: There is a there is quite a split across the

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Speaker 1: nation in terms of how to address these issues. UM.

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Speaker 1: Some legislatures are stepping in and and often when they do,

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Speaker 1: they're exempting body camera videos from disclosure. And they often

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Speaker 1: point to the example of Washington State actually UM as

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Speaker 1: to why they're doing that, because Washington State had a

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Speaker 1: broad public disclosure law and and UM and we had

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Speaker 1: a requester who made national headlines by requesting huge volumes

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Speaker 1: of video and then posted it for a while on YouTube,

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Speaker 1: And so you actually could for a while see on

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Speaker 1: YouTube police calls responding to, for example, and domestic violence, UM,

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Speaker 1: um calls, UM, all sorts of highly sensitive situations. UM.

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Speaker 1: So you're seeing some legislatures um responding to that and

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Speaker 1: saying we're going to exempt it to protect privacy. We're

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Speaker 1: going to classify it as a law enforcement record, we're

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Speaker 1: going to classify it as a personnel record, etcetera, to

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Speaker 1: to to shield these videos from disclosure. Well, our thanks

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Speaker 1: to Mary fan a professor at the University of Washington

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Speaker 1: School of Law, is a very complicated issue, but one

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Speaker 1: in which North Carolina at least has come down on

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Speaker 1: the side of protecting the privacy rights of police officers.

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Speaker 1: I know when when this happened initially, I mean, the

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Speaker 1: man who put this into who suggested the law, said

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Speaker 1: its intent was to take politics out of request for

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Speaker 1: body camera footage. It seems yes, that's a little difficult

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Speaker 1: to do. That's it for this edition of Bloomberg Law

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Speaker 1: will be back tomorrow. Thanks to our technical director Chris

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Speaker 1: tra Comy and our producer David Sucherman. You can find

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Speaker 1: more legal news at Bloomberg Law dot com and Bloomberg

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Speaker 1: BNA dot com, plus an invaluable website for the legal

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Speaker 1: community at Big Law Business dot com