When Florida voters approved a constitutional amendment known as “Marsy’s Law” – named for Marsy Nicholas, the UC Santa Barbara senior who was stalked and murdered by her ex-boyfriend – some law enforcement agencies took the position that they were prohibited from disclosing the identity of crime victims because the amendment gave victims of a crime “the right to prevent the disclosure of information or records that could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim’s family.” Fla. Const. Art. I, § 16(b). At the time, we flagged our concern that this overbroad interpretation would enable law enforcement to withhold all information about a crime from the public. See Media Matters, https://mailchi.mp/8d8690c2eb32/media-matters. Indeed, as we predicted, the inconsistent application of the law across the State of Florida created problems for media “ride-alongs” which, by necessity, “identify” victims of crimes.

These concerns reached the Florida Supreme Court in City of Tallahassee v. Florida Police Benevolent Associations (FPBA).  The case involved two police officers who had been involved in lethal shooting incidents and sought to prevent their names from being disclosed to reporters because, they claimed, they were “victims” under Marsy’s Law. The Florida Supreme Court, however, rejected the police officers’ interpretation of Marsy’s Law as too broad. The court held that a victim’s name is not the kind of confidential information covered by the statute because “identifying” a person is not the same as “locat[ing] or harass[ing]” him. In addition, the court noted that a prohibition against the disclosure of a victim’s name would violate a defendant’s constitutional right to confront adverse witnesses. Finally, the court recognized that a categorical ban on releasing victim’s names would conflict with the right under the Florida Constitution to access public records. Thus, the court injected some welcome clarity into an inconsistent and muddled interpretation of the law.