A bill that would remove the autopsies of children who are victims of violent crime from the public record has passed the state legislature. Only the child’s legal guardians or, in some cases, a court order would allow them to be released.
A version of the current legislation, HB 1695, was first introduced during last year’s special session on gun violence, and immediately sparked concerns about transparency.
Deborah Fisher, the executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, wrote a piece at the time arguing that the bill could actually hamper child victims from getting justice. She pointed out that journalists have used autopsies to investigate the deaths of kids who were killed by family members or law enforcement.
“We were chiefly concerned with cover-ups, frankly,” she said.
Since then, the bill has been amended to allow these autopsies to be inspected in person, although photocopies and pictures are banned. Fisher said that’s a big improvement.
“We were glad with that compromise to at least allow inspection, because it doesn’t prevent someone from taking notes about what’s in that report,” she said.
That means that journalists — or anyone else — can still view these documents and report on the information in them. Photos of the deceased are already redacted in publicly available autopsies.
This bill was backed by many Covenant parents, who wanted to keep the autopsies of the children who were killed during last year’s shooting confidential.
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