PROVIDENCE – On Feb. 28, a 25-year-old man died after vomiting and complaining of chest pains for 24 hours at Adult Correctional Institutions, according to his cellmate. In the following months, three other people died while in state custody.
Questions arise about what led to the sudden deaths, but in Rhode Island, unlike many states, autopsy reports are not public. In the case of Willie Washington Jr., the 25-year-old who died on Feb. 28, the state Department of Health referred questions to the Rhode Island State Police, which in turn referred investigations to the Department of State corrections. An investigation is ongoing.
Although causes of death are regularly released by the State Medical Examiner’s Office, Washington’s death has not yet been determined, Joseph Wendelken, a spokesman for the Department of Health, said in an email.
What is in an autopsy report?
State Law give the Office of State Medical Examiners the authority to perform an autopsy in cases of sudden, unexpected, or violent deaths and other cases in which an autopsy is considered a public necessity. It is your duty to identify and document the cause of death.
An autopsy involves examining the deceased’s major organs and includes several laboratory tests. The final autopsy report is released once all tests are completed, which could take weeks or months.
Who can access autopsy reports under RI law?
Rhode Island law provides that “it shall be unlawful for any person to permit the inspection or disclosure of information contained in vital records, or to copy or issue a copy of all or part of any vital record, except as authorized by regulation.” Vital records are defined as information detailing a person’s birth, death, stillbirth, marriage, divorce, and the like. Reports are available for a fee of $40 upon request from next of kin.
More: Man remembers vomiting of 25-year-old ACI cellmate, complaining of chest pain for more than 24 hours
The Rhode Island Department of Health is what the federal government considers a “covered entity” when it comes to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, known as HIPAA, which means health authorities cannot disclose protected information by HIPAA, such as information in autopsy reports, to any requester, Wendelken said.
They can release an autopsy report to the deceased’s next of kin, and a next of kin can also authorize disclosure to someone else, such as a lawyer, he said. Other people with certain legal authority may also access the autopsy reports, including an executor of the deceased’s estate or an estate administrator appointed by a probate court.
Are autopsy reports public in other states?
Many states consider autopsy reports public records, but have exceptions for when a matter remains under investigation, according to the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. Rhode Island, however, is not alone among New England states in considering them confidential.
There is an exception in Massachusetts that specifies that reports become “presumptively” public once a prosecutor determines that the case will not be presented to a grand jury or files a notice that a grand jury has “returned an indictment or no bill.” .
Calls for a balancing test, especially when a death occurs in state custody
The state affiliate of the American Civil Liberties Union and eight other organizations last month called for an independent investigation into the deaths of Washington and the other three ACI members. On March 10, a man died after an apparent medical emergency at the Intake Care Center. Another man collapsed and died while playing basketball in the maximum security installation. Two days later, a woman was found unresponsive shortly after being admitted and later died.
The groups pressured prison officials for more transparency and accountability in the investigation and disclosure of deaths and the series of suicides last year. They implored authorities to keep families better informed about the investigation and its findings.
More: These state agencies have spoken out against expanding access to public records. Here’s why.
Steven Brown, executive director of the state ACLU, emphasizes the need for a balancing test that would require disclosure of most personal or other records identifiable to a specific person unless it constituted a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
“The complete denial of public access to autopsy records is one of many examples of the excessive secrecy imposed on certain types of important documents under Rhode Island law. As with many other types of government records that potentially implicate legitimate privacy interests and public interest issues, we believe a balancing test should be available to weigh these competing interests,” Brown said in an email.
He stressed that it is important to have a mechanism that allows access to such information in circumstances where there is a legitimate public interest in knowing the cause of a person’s death, especially people who died while in government custody.
This article originally appeared in The Providence Journal: Should autopsy reports be public in RI? ACLU seeks more transparency
