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Justices deny lawyers bid for foster photos { March 30 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-033004foster_lat,1,5780108.story?coll=la-home-headlineshttp://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-033004foster_lat,1,5780108.story?coll=la-home-headlines
Justices Deny Lawyer's Bid for Foster Photos
A unanimous Supreme Court rules that former Clinton aide's family has privacy rights that trump the Freedom of Information Act, unless there's proof of wrongdoing.
By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer
1:29 PM PST, March 30, 2004
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said today that the family of a prominent dead person has a privacy right to object to the government's release of photographs taken at the death scene.
In a 9-0 ruling, the court held that the Freedom of Information Act does not require the public release of four close-up photos of the body of Vincent Foster, the White House lawyer and aide to President Bill Clinton who shot himself in 1993.
Today's ruling reverses the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and dismisses a lawsuit brought by a Los Angeles lawyer who believes that the former Clinton advisor may have been murdered.
Foster's family has a right "to secure their own refuge from a sensation-seeking culture for their own peace of mind and tranquillity," said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.
Washington lawyer James Hamilton, whom Foster had consulted before his death, represented Foster's family in seeking to keep private the photos of his body.
"The family is extremely pleased with the holding by the Supreme Court. We hope other grieving families will benefit from the court's decision," Foster's family said.
Today's decision is likely to bar future requests for photos of the remains of victims of the space shuttle Columbia disaster or the destruction of the World Trade Center in New York and, possibly, the body of race car driver Dale Earnhardt. His family has been fighting in the Florida courts to block the release of autopsy photographs of Earnhardt, who was killed in a crash at the Daytona Speedway in 2001.
At least since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963, the government has faced requests for the public release of information or photos in its files that might bear on a national tragedy. In Kennedy's case, conspiracy theorists have continued to claim that, contrary to the Warren Commission report, he was not shot from behind by a lone assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald.
The Freedom of Information Act generally requires the federal government to make public the information kept in its files. But among the many exceptions to the disclosure rule are law enforcement records that "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of privacy."
Foster had grown up in Arkansas with Bill Clinton and was a law partner in Little Rock with Hillary Rodham Clinton. He went to Washington in January, 1993 when Clinton became president, and served Clinton as deputy White House counsel.
But like the Clintons, he came in for rough treatment from the start. In mid-June, 1993, the Wall Street Journal's editorial page turned a harsh light on him. In an editorial entitled, "Who is Vincent Foster?" the paper implied that he may have been leading a cover-up of the Whitewater affair in Arkansas.
"I was not meant for the job or the spotlight of public life in Washington," Foster wrote in a note found in his briefcase after his death. "Here ruining people is considered sport."
On July 20, after having lunch at his desk, he left the White House. Several hours later, his body was discovered in Ft. Marcy Park overlooking the Potomac River. He had been shot in the head; a gun lay next to his right hand.
Investigations by the U.S. Park Police, committees of the House and the Senate and independent counsels Robert Fiske and Kenneth Starr all reached the same conclusion that Foster had committed suicide.
But Allan Favish, a Los Angeles lawyer, maintained that there were "discrepancies" in the official version of what happened, and that these questions could be resolved only by the government releasing the death scene photos of Foster and the gun he used to kill himself. Favish had pursued the issue while working in Washington for Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog group, but Starr's office refused to release the photos of the death scene. After moving to Los Angeles, Favish filed a suit in 1997 in federal court to enforce his claim under the Freedom of Information Act.
While U.S. District Judge William Keller refused to order the release of the photos of Foster, the 9th Circuit did so in a 2-1 decision. The majority said Favish had not discovered wrongdoing in the official investigations, but the law creates a "right to look, a right to speculate and argue again, a right of public scrutiny," wrote Judge John Noonan.
U.S. Solicitor Gen. Theodore B. Olson appealed on behalf of the independent counsel's office, and the Supreme Court reversed the 9th Circuit's ruling.
The right to privacy for families who have lost a loved one is of ancient standing, Kennedy said in the case now known as National Archives vs. Favish. Both law and tradition establish "the right of family members to direct and control disposition of the body of the deceased and to limit attempts to exploit pictures of the ... remains for public purposes," he wrote.
While this privacy right may be outweighed sometimes, he said, "Favish has not produced any evidence that would warrant a belief by a reasonable person that alleged government impropriety might have occurred."
Favish said he was disappointed.
"It looks like the end of the case," he said, adding that the court ignored his evidence highlighting questions about the investigation. "There's no discussion of the evidence in their opinion, just a conclusion that there is no evidence. I don't see any justification for that conclusion," he said.
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