In 2005, The Denver Post sued the state of Colorado arguing that the "Basement Tapes" should be considered criminal justice records, which would give the Jefferson County Sheriff, Ted Mink, the discretion to balance the parties' interests and determine whether to release the tapes. The Court agreed.
The Harris', Klebolds, and Sheriff Ted Mink opposed making the tapes available for public inspection and the initial decision was appealed. At first, the court of appeals held that the 'Basement Tapes' were subject to CCJRA, but a rehearing caused the court to reconsider and held that the tapes were not subject to CCJRA, but were subject to CORA. However, in the end, the tapes were sealed forever.
Controversies
The problem with the court's decision to seal the tapes from public inspection is that the Sheriff obtained the tapes pursuant to a valid search warrant and used the tapes to investigate crimes connected with the Columbine shooting. They were also used to prepare the JCSO final report. This should have made them criminal justice records under CCJRA. Read more about this case from caselaw.findlaw.com.
The final argument that successfully sealed the 'Basement Tapes' from public view was as follows:
That the court of appeals erred in holding that private documents seized from a home pursuant to search warrant are public records.
Private Records Seized pursuant to a warrant are neither public records as defined by CORA nor criminal justice records under CJRA.
Law enforcement agencies seizing private records pursuant to a search warrant have no property rights in the seized records.
Finding seized documents to be public records threatens centuries of carefully crafted Fourth Amendment protections.
The court of appeals misinterpreted CORA and the CCJRA when it ruled that police investigative files are public records governed by CORA and not criminal justice records governed by the CCJRA.
Note: After the hearing, this audio file was published to the court’s website as public record, as all oral arguments are published… but once the research community started picking it apart, the link was removed. However, the court never removed the file - just the link. I re-published this audio file several years ago, and within hours, the court removed the audio file and deleted the entire web page containing all oral arguments for the entire month… a few months later, all returned - except for this file. What about these oral arguments do they not want people to hear?
Scrutinize this audio because it offers some important clues.
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