State police have appealed a Freedom of Information Commission ruling that the department must make available personal documents seized from Adam Lanza’s home during the course of the investigation into the 2012 killings of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
The appeal was filed on June 26. In addition to the FOIC, it names the Hartford Courant and David Altimari, a reporter at the Courant, as defendants.
The appeal asks the court to reverse a May 13 unanimous decision by the commission that state police must make documents seized from Lanza’s home available to the public. The commission made the ruling, in part, because of the state’s expense investigating the Sandy Hook shooting and the worldwide media attention the shooting garnered.
The ruling “failed to conclude that seized property is under the control of the judicial branch and thus is not a public record,” the appeal contends.
The Courant attempted to obtain copies of documents noted in the state police’s investigation into the massacre beginning in January of 2014, but the Department of Emergency Services and Public Protection, which oversees the state’s police force, has been blocking those efforts.
