‘Uncharged individuals’ may not be exposed to the ‘court of public opinion’ in grand jury documents, the state high court ruled.
Prosecutors in Maryland may not reveal the names of individuals who allegedly hid or failed to report Church abuse, the state Supreme Court said April 27.
As part of its investigation into alleged abuse in the Archdiocese of Baltimore, the state attorney generalʼs office had sought to make public the details of a grand jury report, including the identities of individuals who have not been charged with a crime but who allegedly failed to stop abuse from occurring.
A lower court granted the attorney generalʼs request to publish the information, with an appellate court partly upholding that decision. Yet in its April 27 ruling, the Maryland Supreme Court reversed those decisions, holding that the attorney generalʼs office did not “meet [the] burden” of justifying the release of the identities.
“Many grand jury investigations obtain damaging information and allegations about uncharged individuals that the public might benefit from learning,” the high court acknowledged.
But “one of the primary purposes of grand jury secrecy is to protect uncharged persons from public disgrace in the absence of
