Evidence key for Santa Fe families
If we have decided as a culture that the mythical Wild West is our model when it comes to gun safety, if we are going to continue electing lawmakers who apparently have little interest in working to prevent the dangers of gun violence, especially in our schools, then perhaps we can begin tweaking the law to reflect the reality of rippling consequences.
One modest proposal comes to mind as we approach another anniversary of the mass shooting at Santa Fe High School on May 18, 2018, a massacre that left eight students and two teachers dead, 13 people wounded and dozens of family members and survivors forever changed. Even though it’s been five years, the families of those victims still are not allowed to see the medical examiner’s reports, surveillance footage from the school and other pieces of information that might provide a sense of closure. They can’t see it because Galveston County District Attorney Jack Roady won’t allow them to.
Roady is not being cavalier. Obligated to help ensure a fair capital murder trial for the shooter, 22-year-old Dimitrios Pagourtzis, he’s following state law. He has been aware that releasing information might influence potential jurors, and that could fuel defense attempts to move to the trial to another county.
The problem, though, is that Pagourtzis won’t be tried for at least another year, if ever. He remains committed to a state mental institution, where he’s been since 2019. A judge has determined that he’s incompetent to stand trial.
“This is extremely disappointing news, especially as we near the fiveyear anniversary of these tragic murders,” Roady said in a statement released last week. “Nevertheless, we remain committed to seeing this case tried and seeing that justice is done.”
Roady’s hands may be tied, but legislators’ hands are not. They are free to change the law – without jeopardizing Pagourtzis’ right to a fair trial. We urge them to do just that.
State Sen. Mayes Middleton, the Galveston Republican who represents Santa Fe, has introduced a bill that would allow prosecutors to share medical examiners’ reports and video evidence with deceased crime victims’ parents or children without making that information available to the general public. The proposed law, Senate Bill 435, would pertain to “evidence of a crime that resulted in the death of a person and that occurred in the prosecutor’s jurisdiction.”
Family members would be prohibited from duplicating, recording, capturing or otherwise memorializing the information they view. Prosecutors also could require family members to sign confidentiality agreements before viewing the information. The changes in the law would apply to crimes that occurred before, on or after the effective date of the new law, meaning it would apply retroactively, if passed, to the Santa Fe High School families, as well as victims of earlier crimes.
“Senate Bill 435 is a simple next-ofkin rights bill to ease some of the pain of not knowing what happened when grieving after a heinous crime,” Middleton said in a statement. “The bill would allow victim’s families to view certain evidence related to the crime without requiring the evidence be publicly disclosed.”
Middleton’s bill has Roady’s support. “Under the current law, crime victims and their families don’t have the ability to access this information prior to trial,” the district attorney said in a statement released by his office. “This has been especially heartbreaking for the victims’ families in the Santa Fe High School shooting, since the trial in that case has been delayed while we wait for the defendant to be restored to competency. This bill would address that issue and, hopefully, allow us to provide some of the information these families have been waiting for.”
Thinking about the anguish those families experience reminds us of Steve Perkins, who lost his wife, Ann, in the Santa Fe shooting. Perkins told Chronicle reporter Cayla Harris that he’s always thinking about the “whatif,” the “unknowns.”
“This isn’t their information,” he said. “This is mine. This is my wife. This was her murder. This is my information. It’s not for them, in my opinion, to keep it from me.”
He’s right, of course. As we wrote recently, Texas public information laws have been woefully weakened through the years to allow exceptions, some of arguable merit and some not. We urge lawmakers such as Middleton to think bigger and file bills to strengthen Texans’ access to public information overall but that doesn’t mean we can’t support his narrow efforts here.
Living in a state that leads the nation in gun-related deaths, with more than 4,000 in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Middleton’s proposal seems the least we can do to get families answers. Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, Uvalde and numerous other Texas communities afflicted by gun violence are woeful reminders that if we continue to do little to prevent shooting sprees, we at least ought to do more in response. Survivors and witnesses, particularly children and teens, need physical and mental health assistance to deal with post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse, sleep disorders, panic attacks and self-harm. They often need financial assistance, maybe even money from a state funeral fund.
The good people of Santa Fe, hoping to ease however slightly their neverending heartbreak, were persistent enough to get a lawmaker’s attention. Their state senator’s response is a step in the right direction and it deserves bipartisan support.