State lawmakers made significant adjustments to a bill that closes autopsy reports on minors, adding a deceased child’s name to the summary of information that must be released to the public following a death.
County coroners could publicly release an autopsy report concerning a minor’s death while in the care or custody of a government agency under a revised bill passed by the Colorado House.
State lawmakers moved to make autopsy reports on minors confidential in Colorado despite extensive testimony from journalists and a child-protection advocate who explained the public-interest benefits of keeping those records open.
Nearly six years after then-Gov. John Hickenlooper vetoed a bill to seal autopsy reports on minors, Colorado’s county coroners are again trying to restrict public access to those records.
A Denver news organization’s lawsuit seeks the public disclosure of photos showing the tourniquet and plastic bed sheets allegedly used to kill an inmate at the federal Supermax prison in Florence last year.
A lawsuit filed by a Colorado State University journalism student alleges the Larimer County coroner wrongfully denied her Colorado Open Records Act request for the autopsy report on a 65-year-old man who was shot to death on a Loveland street corner in 2015.
A Las Animas County District Court judge has ordered the county coroner to pay attorney fees and court costs for improperly denying a Trinidad resident’s request for the autopsy report on a murder victim.
A judge in Las Animas County has ordered the public release of an autopsy report that a lawsuit claims was wrongly withheld from a Trinidad resident who runs a Facebook-based community news site.
A Trinidad resident who runs a Facebook-based community news site is suing the Las Animas County coroner for wrongly denying his request for the autopsy report on a man whose decomposed body was found in an apartment in 2018.
Two words come to mind when looking back at 2018’s government transparency highlights and lowlights in Colorado. Judicial secrecy.
