Ala. University Suspect Wants Report Kept Secret

Last updated on: January 25, 2012 at 6:27 pm by

Ala. University Suspect Wants Report Kept Secret 2012-01-25T18:27:31-07:00

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DEDHAM, Mass. (AP) — An Alabama professor accused of killing three colleagues will ask a judge on Wednesday to keep a report into the 1986 killing of her brother secret.

The highest court in Massachusetts ruled last month that a judge’s inquest report into the death of Amy Bishop’s brother Seth can be released publicly.

But the court also said Amy Bishop’s lawyer, prosecutors and others could go to court to argue that there is “good cause” why it should remain sealed. A hearing is scheduled Wednesday in Norfolk Superior Court on a request by Bishop’s lawyer to keep the report sealed from public view.

Bishop, a former biology professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, was charged with opening fire on colleagues in 2010, killing three and wounding three others.

After the shootings, a Massachusetts judge conducted a closed-door inquest into the death of 18-year-old Seth Bishop. The shooting at the family’s Braintree home had been ruled an accident after Amy Bishop told police she had accidentally shot her brother while trying to unload her father’s shotgun.

But after the inquest, a grand jury indicted Bishop on murder charges in her brother’s death.

Bishop’s lawyer, Larry Tipton, has argued that releasing the inquest report and transcript could prejudice juries against her in both Massachusetts and in Alabama, where she faces a possible death sentence.

“That increment could make the difference that tips the balance toward death,” Tipton argued in documents filed with the Supreme Judicial Court.

The Boston Globe challenged a judge’s decision to keep the inquest records sealed, saying that release of the documents could shed some light on what led to authorities’ decision not to prosecute Bishop in her brother’s death decades ago.

In its decision last month, the Supreme Judicial Court sided with the Globe and outlined new rules for the release of inquest materials. The high court said the automatic impoundment of the records ends after the subject of the inquest is indicted by a grand jury or after prosecutors decide not to present the case to a grand jury.

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