Montana Supreme Court says media can weigh in on sealed documents in Anaconda homicide case

A Montana Supreme Court panel ordered Tuesday that a District Court in southwest Montana allow a coalition of media outlets to weigh in on public access to documents in the homicide case against Michael Paul Brown, the man charged with fatally shooting four people in Anaconda last summer.

Press outlets, including Montana Free Press, had sought to intervene in the criminal case against Brown in January, arguing that District Court Judge Jeffrey Dahood had incorrectly sealed all of the case’s documents and proceedings in August before allowing the media the opportunity to object. Dahood rejected that request in January, saying the media outlets did not show why they would have authority to become a part of the case. 

In its Tuesday order, the five-member Supreme Court panel sided with the media plaintiffs in their request for the high court to review that decision. The court’s ruling, signed by Chief Justice Cory Swanson, said that Dahood’s decision to block the media’s intervention in the case was “a fundamental misunderstanding of governing law.”

The Supreme Court directed the District Court to grant media outlets’ request to participate in the case. The order effectively resets the legal process that led documents to be sealed, requiring that this time the District Court hear arguments from the media.

“The Montana Supreme Court determined that there was an error of law, a mistake of law, that justified its intervention, but it didn’t outright order the release of information because that’s the role of the District Court,” said Constance Van Kley, a constitutional law professor at the University of Montana, in a Wednesday interview.  

The panel of justices highlighted missteps in how the District Court handled the original decision to seal the case and how it blocked media plaintiffs’ motion to intervene.

The court noted that both state law and prior court rulings require “the constitutional balancing” between the right to know and the right to a fair trial. Court precedent, the panel noted, directs a district court to seek “voluntary cooperation” from the media and hold an evidentiary hearing to identify “reasonable alternative means” to sealing records. 

“So it’s not as if it’s an absolute right to information,” Van Kley said. “But generally, the information that’s in the proceedings and the court hearings [or] trial, those things are presumptively open to the press and to the public.”

The court also flagged how the District Court handled the media’s request to intervene in the case. Rather than filing the motion in the official court docket, the opinion recounted, “the clerk refused to file petitioners’ motion and simply gave it to the District Judge who ruled on it.” That process was “inconsistent with Montana law,” the court noted, and undermined the principles of transparency in the Montana Constitution’s right to know provisions.

The August shooting took place inside The Owl Bar in the town of about 9,000 in southwestern Montana. The victims were Nancy Lauretta Kelley, 64; Daniel Edwin Baillie, 59; David Allen Leach, 70; and Tony Wayne Palm, 74. Immediately following their deaths, Brown hid in the mountains outside city limits for a week before law enforcement apprehended him. Charges against Brown include four counts of deliberate homicide, as well as arson, theft and intentionally evading law enforcement.

During the time that Brown hid from police, Dahood granted a motion to seal all documents in the case, a move that was later lifted for some — but not all — of the case records.

In court documents, Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Attorney Morgan Smith argued in favor of sealing “numerous documents” in the case, citing “extensive media coverage and public engagement” that could jeopardize Brown’s right to a fair trial.

“Many of the facts and evidence within the state’s possession have not been disseminated publicly and will be crucial to the state’s prosecution of this matter,” Smith wrote. “The details surrounding the commission of the crimes alleged in this case, should they be subject to public dissemination, would greatly prejudice the prospective jury pool and taint the ability to impanel an impartial jury.”

Smith did not respond to a request for comment about the Supreme Court’s decision. Brown’s public defender, Walter Hennessey, declined to comment on the Supreme Court’s decision.

In a Wednesday morning phone interview, Jim Strauss, president of Montana Newspaper Association, said petitioners plan to meet with their attorney in the coming days to discuss next steps.

Micahel Brown is still undergoing treatment at Montana State Hospital in Warm Springs in an effort to declare him fit to stand trial, according to the most recent court filings. Brown’s next status hearing is scheduled for May.