United States v. Kingsbury
United States v. Kingsbury
Opinion of the Court
JOHN D. BATES, United States District Judge *159In United States v. Johnson,
In Johnson, the Court explained that the government had failed to meet its burden of showing good cause for several of the restrictions it sought to place on the defendant's ability to use and disclose body-worn camera footage. See Fed. R. Crim. 16(d). These restrictions included: (1) a provision shifting the burden of redacting sensitive information from the body-worn camera footage from the government to defense counsel, see
Following the issuance of its opinion in Johnson, the Court directed the parties in this case to confer and jointly propose protective orders governing the body-worn camera footage and police personnel data at issue here. See July 27, 2018 Order [ECF No. 18]. Counsel were unable to reach an agreement as to either issue, however, so Kingsbury submitted oppositions to both of the government's motions. See Def.'s Opp'n to Proposed Protective Order for Body Worn Camera Materials ("Def.'s BWC Opp'n") [ECF No. 20]; Def.'s Opp'n to Proposed Protective Order for PPMS/CADRPTS Materials ("Def.'s PPMS/CADRPTS Opp'n") [ECF No. 21]. The Court will address each of the government's motions (and Kingsbury's oppositions thereto) in turn.
As to body-worn camera footage, Kingsbury's opposition asks to the Court to enter the protective order described in Johnson in all respects but one. Kingsbury argues that unlike in Johnson, where "the government represented that civilians were depicted on the [body-worn camera] videos at issue," here the government represents that "[only] one of the many videos produced to defense counsel depicts a civilian." Id. at 2. Kingsbury therefore asks to Court to impose the Johnson protective order only as to that video and to allow the remaining body-worn camera footage to be *160disclosed without any use or disclosure limitations. See id.
Kingsbury's request for the protective order described in Johnson will be granted, but its request to limit the scope of that order will be denied. Kingsbury is correct that here, unlike in Johnson, the government has not specifically averred that the body-worn camera footage at issue depicts civilian witnesses. But the privacy of civilians was only one of several reasons given in Johnson for prohibiting the distribution of body-worn camera footage to the public at large. See Johnson,
Moreover, the Court noted in Johnson that the D.C. Code and the regulations promulgated thereunder by the Metropolitan Police Department ("MPD") embodied a "policy judgment" that body-worn camera materials "tend to contain information that implicates privacy concerns." Johnson,
In sum, the generalized privacy concerns raised by the government-as well as a respect for the statutory and regulatory processes created by the District-are sufficient to justify what is, at bottom, a relatively modest restriction: a prohibition on using or disclosing that the body-worn camera footage for purposes unrelated to Kingsbury's case (or to any other case in which the Federal Public Defender acts as counsel). The Court will therefore enter the protective order described in Johnson as to all of the body-worn camera footage at issue here.
II. PPMS/CADRPTS DATA
The government also seeks a protective order governing the use and disclosure of certain personnel data regarding the police-officer witnesses in this case: specifically, a list of any internal disciplinary proceeding against those officers that was either (1) sustained by MPD, regardless of when it was opened; or (2) open at any time during the officer's assignment to Kingsbury's case, regardless of whether it was ultimately sustained. See Gov't's Mot. for Protective Order Governing PPMS/CADRPTS Materials ("Gov't's PPMS/CADRPTS Mot.") [ECF No. 15] at 9. The *161government's proposed protective order would impose many of the restrictions that the Court rejected as to body-worn camera materials in Johnson. See [Proposed] Protective Order Governing Discovery of PPMS/CADRPTS Materials [ECF No. 15-1] ¶¶ 1, 3, 5, 8 (proposing to bar defense counsel from using the data in connection with any other case and from sharing it with her colleagues at the Federal Public Defender's Office, to require defense counsel to redact sensitive information from the data before showing it to Kingsbury, and to require her to destroy the data in the event of an acquittal or dismissal). Although Kingsbury does not object to a protective order being entered as to all PPMS/CADRPTS materials, he proposes a more limited order-essentially, an analogue of the order described in Johnson. See Def.'s PPMS/CADRPTS Opp'n at 2.
The Court will enter Kingsbury's proposed protective order. Nothing in the government's motion points to any meaningful differences (for privacy purposes, at least) between the body-worn camera footage at issue in Johnson and the police personnel data at issue here.
For the foregoing reasons, the government's motions for protective orders will be granted subject to the modifications described above. Separate protective orders consistent with this opinion have been issued on this date.
The defendant in Johnson later agreed to enter a guilty plea, so a protective order was ultimately never entered. See Plea Agreement, United States v. Johnson, Crim. Case No. 18-99 (D.D.C. Aug. 29, 2018), ECF No. 26.
Although the government did not file a reply to defendant's opposition, its original motion seeks a protective order governing all body-worn camera footage. See Gov't's Mot. for Protective Order Governing Body Worn Camera Materials ("Gov't's BWC Mot.") [ECF No. 14] at 2.
Nor has the government filed a reply addressing Kingsbury's explicit reliance on Johnson in his opposition.
Accord Huthnance,
Reference
- Full Case Name
- United States v. Louis KINGSBURY
- Cited By
- 5 cases
- Status
- Published