Ohio lawmakers reconsider bill that would limit public access to police records

Ohio lawmakers are reconsidering state budget language that opponents say would have made police records more difficult or in many cases impossible to obtain by the public, according to The Plain Dealer.

The move is the result of a compromise between supporters and opponents to scale back proposed changes in the state public records law that was attached to the Ohio Senate’s budget bill approved this week.

The compromise language would need to end up in the legislature’s final budget plan, to be worked out by a House-Senate joint conference committee.

Opponents feared initial language would impede the ability to overturn wrongful convictions. The Ohio Innocence Project at the UC Law has worked for the past two decades to free every person in Ohio who has been convicted of a crime they didn’t commit.

So far 43 individuals been exonerated or freed thanks to the work of the Ohio Innocence Project (OIP), based in the University of Cincinnati College of Law. The group of clients collectively has spent more than 800 years behind bars for crimes they didn’t do.

Mark Godsey, a professor at UC Law and  director of the Ohio Innocence Project, told The Plain Dealer that the Senate’s budget language was a “good compromise” that addresses his concern that police files could be kept hidden forever.

“I’m comfortable with the current language, with the new amendments,” he said.

Read the full story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer online.

Featured top image of the Ohio Statehouse is courtesy of Istock.