In America, every accused person is innocent until proven guilty, right? Well, we may profess such lofty thoughts, but the cold reality is that most people believe that if you are in jail, you gotta be guilty of something. Look no further than the way people have reacted to Alfonso Rodriguez, Jr., the prime suspect in the Dru Sjodin disappearance. From the very first moment Minnesotans saw him under the glare of television lights, manacled and wearing a faded prison-orange jumpsuit, he was as good as guilty. What’s more, Rodriguez became exhibit A in the argument for bringing back the death penalty to Minnesota. The hysteria surrounding Dru Sjodin graphically illustrates the dangers of publicizing crimes before they’ve been prosecuted, publicly identifying “criminals” before they’ve been convicted of anything.
Dakota County recently created a website identifying who is in the pokey. I am normally a big First Amendment kind of guy, but I think such websites, in the guise of “keeping the public informed,” provide the kind of information that makes a mockery of the notion of presumed innocence.
The website, called the “Dakota County Jail Booking Search,” allows anyone with access to a computer to search the Dakota County jail records to find “anyone that has been booked or is currently in jail.” Now, keep in mind that not only have these individuals not yet been convicted, many have not even made their first appearance before a judge. The DCJBS home page cautions that “information contained herein should not be relied upon for any type of legal action.” Wait, it gets even better. The Dakota County Sheriff’s Office admits that it “cannot represent that the information is current, accurate, or complete. Persons may use false identification information. True identity can only be confirmed through fingerprint comparison.”
So, if the website information should not be relied upon for “any type of legal action” and in fact may be flat out wrong, why in the name of truth, justice, and the American way would any sane organization post it? Dakota County Sheriff Don Gudmundson reportedly believes that it will reduce calls from lawyers, bail bonds workers, and others who want to see if someone is locked up. Chief Deputy Dave Bellows told the Star Tribune, “a lot of people do call to find out if their husband is in jail…we are just trying to make this department a little more user-friendly.”
Which users does Deputy Bellows have in mind? Does he really think that some distraught spouse looking for her husband will get an “I could have had a V-8” moment, pop on to the jail website, and find her Waldo? More likely, the web-site users will not be bail bondsmen and worried wives, but others—like landlords or the habitually nosy. And, given that African Americans and other people of color are disproportionately arrested in this state, this is very scary stuff. According to Robert Sykora, publicizing this information could lead to lost jobs and denied housing. Sykora, a public defender and member of a Minnesota Supreme Court advisory committee looking at Internet access of court records, thinks that easy electronic access to such sensitive information is the start of a very slippery and dangerous slope.
I think Sykora is absolutely right. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that the media could not obtain comprehensive FBI “rap sheets” from a central location. Why? Because the court decided that requiring people to physically retrieve this kind of information creates “practical obscurity” that helps to protect privacy.
The jails are filled with the accused, not necessarily the guilty. An arrest is really only a criminal accusation, and to put an accusation online means that the accused have acquired the electronic equivalent of a scarlet A. Even if they are ultimately exonerated, there is a good chance they can be scarred.
If “innocent until proven guilty” has even a ghost of a chance in our web-crazed society, we should accept that there is such a thing as “too much information.” We do not need to make access to arrest records easy. They are merely a starting point for legal action, not an end point, and the web implies that the case is already closed. Arrests should not be allowed to acquire the aura of established legal fact that a listing on the Internet can create.
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