Globe Newspaper Co. v. District Attorney for the Middle District

Summary

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that docket numbers of criminal cases prosecuted in public judicial proceedings are public records when correlated only with information available from court or other public records and not with defendant-specific information. Such docket numbers are subject to disclosure under the Massachusetts public records statute and are not prohibited from disclosure by the Criminal Offender Record Information statute. The court remanded for modification of the declaratory judgment to reflect these limitations.

Holdings

1. The Globe's request was not moot. The unresolved CORI dispute constituted an actual controversy, and the issue was also capable of repetition yet evading review.
2. Docket numbers of criminal cases prosecuted in public judicial proceedings qualify as chronologically maintained court records of public judicial proceedings and therefore are public records subject to disclosure under the public-records statute, when requested in the manner at issue.
3. The declaration must be limited to docket-number requests framed entirely in terms of information available from court or other public records and not correlated with defendant-specific information.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the Globe's request presented an actual controversy or had become moot because of uncertainty concerning payment of search costs.
2. Whether docket numbers of criminal cases prosecuted in public judicial proceedings qualify as public records under the Massachusetts public-records statute.
3. Whether the CORI statute prohibits disclosure of docket numbers requested by type of case when the request is not correlated with defendant-specific information.
4. Whether the declaratory judgment was overbroad because some docket-number requests could reveal nonpublic defendant information.

Disposition

remanded