The Volokh Conspiracy
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Crime Victims (Including Police) Have No Florida Constitutional Right to Block Disclosure of Their Names
The Florida Constitution's crime victims provision (known as Marsy's Law) provides, in relevant part, that "every [crime] victim" has
The right to prevent the disclosure of information or records that could be used to locate or harass the victim or the victim's family, or which could disclose confidential or privileged information of the victim.
Does this include the right to prevent the disclosure of the victim's name? No, said the Florida Supreme Court today in City of Tallahassee v. Florida Police Benevolent Ass'n, Inc. The case involved police officers who "used lethal force in detaining a suspect," and who claimed they were crime victims who were acting in self-defense; but the court's rationale extends to all crime victims. From Justice John Couriel's opinion for the court:
[We hold that] Marsy's Law guarantees to no victim—police officer or otherwise—the categorical right to withhold his or her name from disclosure…. Marsy's Law speaks only to the right of victims to "prevent the disclosure of information or records that could be used to locate or harass" them or their families. One's name, standing alone, is not that kind of information or record; it communicates nothing about where the individual can be found and bothered.
In other provisions, our Constitution expressly addresses the disclosure of a person's identity. See art. X, § 25(b), Fla. Const. ("In providing such access [to certain medical records], the identity of patients involved in the incidents shall not be disclosed ….") (emphasis added); art. X, § 29(d)(4), Fla. Const. ("All records containing the identity of qualifying patients shall be confidential and kept from public disclosure ….") (emphasis added). We are not persuaded that Florida voters ratified an implicit guarantee that, elsewhere in the same constitution, is expressly stated.
Similarly, when our statutes reflect a legislative bargain to conceal the identities of persons, they do so expressly. We see this in section 119.071, Florida Statutes (2018), the very legislation that discusses, among other things, confidentiality, public records, and crime victims. [Examples omitted. -EV] …
Protecting crime victims from being located—as opposed to identified—is a meaningful distinction, for exposure of a crime victim's location creates a threat of physical danger that exposure of his or her name alone does not generally pose….
That the plain language of section 16(b)(5) does not explicitly protect a victim's name from disclosure stands to reason. For if it did, it would raise serious doubt about how to square a victim's rights under Marsy's Law and a defendant's right to "confront at trial adverse witnesses." … [A] defendant's knowledge of the identity of an adverse witness is often critical to the force and integrity of a cross-examination, as a witness's identity may be germane to the determination of bias or credibility….
