The writings of Sandy Hook's shooter ordered are made public

HARTFORD, CONN. –

Some of the personal belongings of the Sandy Hook Elementary School Shooter, including personal diaries containing stories of wounded children and a spreadsheet classifying mass murders, must be made public because they are not exempt from the laws relating to open record, ruled the Connecticut Supreme Court on Tuesday.

Thousands of documents have already been released from the investigation that ended without determining the motive for the massacre of 20 freshmen and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, but the Writings could enlighten the shooter's reflection, Adam Lanza.

Hartford Courant and other media organizations have asked to see Lanza's property, which was seized by the authorities during a search of Lanza's home and described in a police report. State issued about a year after the shooting. State police rejected the claims, citing the right to privacy in the state's law on house searches and seizures.

The Courant appealed the State Freedom of Information Commission, which ordered in 2015 the state police to hand over the documents. But Judge Carl Schuman of the Superior Court overturned the commission in 2016 – a decision quashed Tuesday in the 5-0 Supreme Court ruling.

"We believe these documents are necessary to tell a full story in our reporting," said Andrew Julien, publisher and editor of The Current. "Understanding what a mass killer was thinking not only paints a clearer picture of the individual, it also helps us to identify and understand the alarm signals that could be part of a formula." prevention of future large-scale shootings. "

This is not immediately clear when the 35 requested articles will be published. The Attorney General's office, which represents the state police and declined to comment on Tuesday, could ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its decision or possibly appeal to the US Supreme Court. State police officials did not return messages requesting comment.

Among the disputed documents are a spreadsheet classifying mass murders by name and number of people killed and a notebook called "Grandma's Big Book". The notebook contains a story that Lanza wrote in fifth grade about a woman using her "rifle cane" to kill people.

The police have not yet released an eight-page document titled simply "me," described in a police inventory as "detailing relationships, ideal companion, culture, vote, personal beliefs, describing doctors who touch children as being a rape ". Another, named "tomorrow", apparently contains details about "desires, list of benefits of being lean and negative connotations associated with overweight, list of goals …".

Some of the other requested items include a folder containing cartoon-style hand-drawn images and stories about Pokemon-type characters; a package of educational material from the Sandy Hook School to Lanza's mother, including report cards and an educational plan addressing her mental health issues; a list of problems and requests from Lanza to his mother; and the story of a relationship between a 10-year-old boy and a 20-year-old man.

A report from the Connecticut Children's Advocate stated that Lanza's serious and deteriorating mental health problems, his concern for violence, and his access to his mother's weapons "were a recipe for mass murder."

Lanza's medical and school records contain references to diagnoses of autism spectrum disorder, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder, the Children's Advocate's office said. According to the 2014 report, Nancy Lanza supported her son's resistance to medication and kept him at home at home, where he was surrounded by an arsenal of guns and spent long hours playing games. violent video games.

In Tuesday's judgment, Judge Raheem Mullins wrote that the court should "narrowly interpret" the wording of a state law that allows exceptions to public disclosure and that "otherwise, any law governing general processing of documents by an agency becomes a possible restriction of disclosure ".

"The court of first instance has stated in the express laws of the laws on searches and seizures that nothing creates a confidentiality in the documents or otherwise limits the disclosure, copying or distribution of documents", Mullins writes. "Indeed, search and seizure laws are silent on issues of confidentiality, copying or public disclosure."