After a monthslong court fight, the Utah Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered Salt Lake County District Attorney Neal Gunnarson to release part of his secret investigation into Deedee Corradini's acceptance of $231,000 in gifts and loans.
Chief Justice Michael Zimmerman ordered 3rd District Judge Homer Wilkinson to allow access to documents that he used as the basis to seal the investigation. The investigation itself will remain sealed."This vindicates the position taken all along that these are public records, that were not closed by statute, and that were improperly closed in the first place," said Deseret News attorney Jeff Hunt.
The Kearns-Tribune Corp., publisher of the Salt Lake Tribune, filed suit last April seeking release of the documents. The Deseret News joined the suit when it reached the Supreme Court earlier this month after Wilkinson denied the request.
Hunt said he and Tribune attorney Michael O'Brien will look at the now-public sealing documents to determine whether the investigation was properly sealed. Only then will they make a decision whether to go after the investigation itself.
"Nothing in this opinion should be read as passing judgment on the issue of whether the order approving the investigation itself was appropriate or whether the underlying investigative secrecy order was supported by the required good cause showing," Zimmerman wrote. "We have here addressed only the issue of whether the statute allows the district court to enter an order of secrecy covering the district attorney's investigative secrecy application. We conclude that it does not."
Wilkinson also held that the Tribune lacked standing to challenge the secrecy order - that is that it wasn't injured by it. The Supreme Court overruled that as well.
"The presumed openness of the Investigative Subpoena Powers Act records affords the general public, of which the press is a member, standing to challenge secrecy orders entered by the district court," Zimmerman wrote.
The secrecy documents now open to perusal include Gunnarson's request for secrecy, an accompanying "good cause" statement containing the basis for the request, and the order granting secrecy.
The court disagreed with Wilkinson's position that the burden was on the newspapers to prove why the documents should not be secret.