HELENA — Three weeks after Michael Paul Brown, the man suspected of killing four people in Anaconda, was taken into custody, almost all of the information regarding his case has remained sealed to the public. However, leaders say they expect that to change by next week.
On Friday afternoon, Anaconda-Deer Lodge County Attorney Morgan Smith told MTN Brown will have an arraignment September 3 at 9:30 a.m., in front of District Court Judge Jeffrey Dahood in Anaconda. She said she expected the sealed status of the case would be amended before that time, and some of the court documents would become available.
Jonathon Ambarian reports - watch:
As of Friday morning, Brown remained in custody at the Butte-Silver Bow Detention Center, where he’s been since Aug. 8, when he was arrested after a weeklong manhunt. He is listed only as being held on an “outside agency warrant.”
Though Brown made an initial appearance in court a few days after his arrest, there had still been no public record available to this point on what charges Brown is facing, what court was handling his case or which judge he had been assigned to.
This week, an article from the Montana Free Press brought attention to the fact that documents in Brown’s case were sealed.
Montana law says, in general, pretrial proceedings and records are open to the public. The long wait for Brown’s case to be unsealed was a surprise to attorneys MTN spoke with, though not all were willing to comment on the record.
Mike Meloy, an attorney who has spent decades working on cases involving Montana’s public records laws and the right to know, said it’s very rare to see a case where all of the documents have been sealed. He remembered one such case he was involved in years ago – and that case went to the Montana Supreme Court.
“The Supreme Court said, ‘No, you can't close it without exhausting all of these other alternatives; you’ve got to consider the other methods of protecting fair trial rights than closing the entire proceeding, because we just don't do that in Montana,’” he said.
Meloy said alternatives like changing venues could address possible concerns about “contaminating” the jury pool with information about the case.
State law says a judge can seal a record if information from a pretrial proceeding “would create a clear and present danger to the fairness of the trial,” and if that impact “cannot be avoided by any reasonable alternative means.”
Law enforcement can also request that documents related to a search warrant be sealed if they would create a concern about individual privacy that outweighs the public’s right to know.
Meloy said, in this case, even the justification for sealing the case hasn’t yet been made available to the public, so it’s hard to know what led to the decision. He believes at least the motion to seal should have been open so people could see the justification.
“When the parties, like the prosecution and the defense, all agree on something, it's hard for a judge to say no without hearing the alternative,” he said. “My guess is that in this case, no one came in on the side of the public saying, ‘You can't do this, Judge, it’s illegal, it's unconstitutional.’ If that had happened, I think the result might have been different, because the law is pretty clear, I think.”
OVERVIEW
- WHAT: A man killed a bartender and three customers
- WHERE: The Owl Bar in Anaconda
- WHEN: At about 10:30 a.m. on Friday, August 1
- SUSPECT: 45-year-old Michael Brown of Anaconda
- VICTIMS: Nancy Kelley, 64; Daniel Baillie, 59; David Leach, 70; Tony Palm, 74
- MOTIVE: Unknown
- STATUS: Brown was arrested on Friday, August 8
