Mexico, Mo. -- A circuit court decision on Tuesday will finally allow a grieving mother to end her decade-long quest to gain a full picture of her adult daughter’s life immediately before her suspicious death in 2008.
On Tuesday, an Audrain County circuit judge ruled that the Audrain County Sheriff’s Office must produce the records that include evidence related to criminal allegations Officer Melissa Winnie made in early 2007 about fellow members of the East Central Missouri Drug Task Force. About a year after she complained about treatment she had received from two task force members, the 29-year-old woman died of a gunshot wound under suspicious circumstances.
“A law enforcement agency cannot choose to ignore the rules that guide public record law when it’s inconvenient for them,” said Tony Rothert, legal director, ACLU of Missouri. “The Sunshine Law exists for reasons such as this—to keep the government accountable to the people it serves.”
Tuesday’s decision followed a lawsuit filed by the Audrain County Sheriff’s Office against Melissa Winnie’s mother, Joanna Winnie, and transparency activist Aaron Malin, who were represented by the ACLU of Missouri and the Freedom Center of Missouri, respectively.
The sheriff’s office sued Joanna Winnie and Malin under a section of the Sunshine Law that allows government entities to file lawsuits in order to obtain a court decision about whether particular records are open to the public. The sheriff’s office asked the court to allow it to continue withholding a 27-page report and a series of audio recordings related to Melissa Winnie’s 2007 accusations against two members of the East Central Missouri Drug Task Force.
For years, Joanna Winnie had unsuccessfully sought records from the Audrain County Sheriff’s Office relating to the investigation into her daughter’s death, and the sheriff’s office steadfastly refused to produce those records. In 2016, after Malin joined Joanna Winnie in pressuring the sheriff’s office, the agency relented and allowed the pair to review some of the evidence and records the sheriff’s office had previously withheld.
In Tuesday’s decision, the judge ruled that while a law enforcement agency may redact a limited amount of information related to “techniques, procedures, or guidelines for law enforcement investigations,” the sheriff’s office must produce the disputed records to Winnie and Malin.