As the special session continues, one of the bills heading to the Tennessee Senate would remove the autopsies of children who are victims of violent crime from the public record. Only their legal guardians would have the right to release them.
The bill, HB 7007, has drawn support from several Covenant parents, who have said that the autopsies of the children who were killed during the Covenant School shooting are painful, private and should not be part of the public record.
But many worry that the bill’s scope is too broad and could actually hamper other child victims and their families from getting justice.
Deborah Fisher, the executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government, is one of them.
“Autopsies have been used for years to right wrongs and to sometimes reveal cover-ups,” she said.
Several journalists have spoken out against the bill, including Phil Williams with NewsChannel 5. Williams cited at least two cases where he used an autopsy report to successfully investigate the deaths of children who he discovered were killed by their parents or parent’s partners.
As well intended as this legislation obviously is, this bill is potentially dangerous. I was able to finally force the re-opening of the death of a young child and the conviction of his murderer because the autopsy reports were public record. 1/4 https://t.co/buSpXn2gZA
— Phil Williams (@NC5PhilWilliams) August 15, 2023
Fisher pointed to a case in Memphis, where reporter Marc Perrusquia with The Commercial Appeal was able to use an autopsy to show that a child had been shot in the head by police during a SWAT raid, contradicting what law enforcement had said. She explained that this bill could prevent similar investigations in cases where it’s not immediately clear how a child was killed.
“We need to have time to think about the impact of this bill on situations that might be unlike the Covenant shooting where it’s clear what happened there,” she said. “When a child dies at the hand of government — whether it’s in DCS or law enforcement —absolutely, it is in the public interest to know what happened.”
The bill states that only the legal guardian of a minor victim would have the right to release their autopsy. But Fisher pointed out that there are several situations this requirement does not take into account, including:
- The child’s legal guardian died with them
- The child died while in the custody of the Department of Children’s Services
- The child’s legal guardian is absent, and they are in the care of someone else, such as a grandparent
- The child’s legal guardians disagree about whether or not to release the autopsy
The state senate is scheduled to consider this bill when they reconvene Monday afternoon.
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