A Tennessee judge denied the July 4 release Covenant School ShooterHe said doing so could pose a safety risk to the Nashville private school.
This decision came in response to the following: Brewer, et al. v. Metropolitan Government of Nashvilleet al., in which multiple parties, including the National Police Association and the Tennessee Firearms Association, sued the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) for access to records related to the November 27, 2023 school shooting that killed six people, including Mike Hill, 61; Cynthia Peake, 61; Katherine Koonce, 60; and 9-year-olds Hailey Scruggs, Evelyn Dieckhaus, and William Kinney.
“Unfortunately, school shootings and violence have become commonplace in our society. Access to immediate information has also become a societal expectation that we all share,” Davidson County Chancery Court Judge I’Asia Miles wrote in a 60-page order. “However, there are occasions when immediate access to, and the demand for, information must be balanced and controlled in order to protect the integrity of our legal system, particularly the criminal legal system.”
He said that during a pending criminal investigation, “Tennessee courts have determined that unfettered access to every record at any time is not helpful in upholding the system of justice we all depend on to ensure that the criminal legal system and investigations remain fair and impartial to everyone involved.”
Judge orders FBI to hand over manifesto of trans school shooter Audrey Hale
Memorials for the six victims of a mass shooting are held outside Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. Three adults and three children were killed inside the school. (KR/MEGA for Fox News Digital)
Miles added, “In this case, the Tennessee General Assembly set forth both state law and statutory exceptions that would prevent disclosure of materials held by the defendant, not only to preserve the integrity of the criminal legal system and the ongoing investigation, but also to keep information relating to school safety from any source out of public view.”
Deceased school shooter and former Covenant student Audrey Hale, who identified as a trans man named Aiden Hale, owned dozens of pages of written material and artifacts that were initially owned by his parents until they transferred ownership of Hale’s estate to the victims’ families, who were included as intervenors in the lawsuit.
Nashville officials aware of alleged leak of Christian school shooter’s manifesto
Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale unlocked the doors to the church office inside the school building. (Twitter @MNPDNashville)
MNPD officers Hale was shot and killed inside the school on the morning of the shooting.
Following months of litigation among police, victims’ families and reporters seeking access to the shooter’s writings and other materials, Miles ruled that any records held by the MNPD “will not be disclosed at this time.”
Read the order
The judge wrote that it would be difficult for the court “to find that an individual’s original and collected works … and artworks whose purpose and plan was to cause harm to innocent people at a school would not be relevant to school safety and therefore exempt from disclosure.”
The MNPD argued that while the shooter is dead, the investigation into the shooting is still ongoing and could result in future criminal action. The police department also said that “portions of the requested records could be released without compromising the open criminal investigation,” the judge said.
Covenant School shooter Audrey Hale, 28, is shown in a driver’s license photo released by Nashville, Tennessee police and in school surveillance video. Hale killed three 9-year-old children and three adults at a private school connected to a church. (Metro Nashville Police Department)
Meanwhile, the victims’ families and Covenant Schools, which was listed as an intervenor in the suit, argued that “all materials and information in Defendants’ possession in this case relate to school safety and should be kept completely free from disclosure, as the release of any information would encourage copycat attacks and thus all information relates to school safety in one way or another,” Miles wrote.
In November last year, authorities became aware that photographs of the crime scene had allegedly been leaked. The killer’s handwritten notes.
Audrey Hale police bodycam released
In March, a federal judge ordered the FBI to grant public records requests for Hale’s so-called “manifesto,” which police found in his vehicle after the shooting. The FBI had denied such requests, saying doing so “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.”
Lawyers representing the parent company of local newspaper the Tennessee Star, which sued the FBI for access to Hale’s manifesto, said “the public has an urgent right to know why this tragedy occurred, how future occurrences can be prevented, and what policies should be in place to address this and other similar tragedies,” the newspaper’s lawyers wrote in the federal complaint.
A police officer walks through the entrance of Covenant School after a shooting in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday, March 27, 2023. (AP Photo/John Amis)
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“The FBI has no right to maintain a monopoly on this information,” he wrote.
Critics of Tennessee and the federal government’s decision not to release the documents believe Hale’s manifesto may reveal the shooter’s motive for targeting the school and killing both adults and children.
Fox News’ Michael Ruiz contributed to this report.
