A judge’s order to open arrest and jail records to the public, issued in Martin County this week, will apply in Brown County unless the sheriff wants to fight it, according to Brown County Atty. R. T. Rodenberg.

The order is the only district court decision issued so far on the 1975 state privacy law, as far as Rodenberg is aware.

This means it will hold true statewide unless a law enforcement agency in another county decides to fight it, Rodenberg said.

MARTIN COUNTY Atty. Elton Kuderer has said he does not plan to appeal District Judge Harvey Holtan’s ruling.

“We’re very pleased that the police officers now have some guidelines they can use for the dissemination of that information,”Kuderer told the Fairmont Sentinel.

“The penalties are so severe that the police were caught right in the middle of it,” Kuderer said.

Early December that the 1975 privacy law blocked the release of the names of persons arrested or jailed. Since then Fairmont and Martin County law enforcement officials withheld this information until initial court appearances of arrestees. Previously it had been the policy of both agencies that names be released at the time of arrest.

The Fairmont paper filed suit against the law enforcement agencies, asking that arrestees’ and jailed persons’ names be released.

JUDGE HOLTAN ordered Fairmont and Martin County law enforcement officials to open arrest and jail records.

He said these officials are required by law to keep records necessary to a full and accurate knowledge of their official activities and that such records are public records and must be open to public inspection and copying (except juvenile records.).

Arresting and jailing are the basic intended results of all official activities of law enforcement, Holtan said.

He cited the following information as necessary to a full and accurate knowledge of such official activity and therefore open to the public (except juvenile records):

Arrests – name and address of arrestee; physical description sufficient to identify; date of arrest, name and title of person making arrest; copy of warrant or other document ordering arrest or substance of same with name and location of court or other authority issuing such document; location of court or other authority issuing such document; disposition and date.

Incarceration – name; physical description sufficient to identify; date of incarceration, by what authority (name and location) and for what purpose; date of release, reason for and by what authority.

THE JUDGE said the 1975 privacy law “clearly excludes public records from its operation.”

The information Holtan listed as part of the public record on arrests and jailings “is sufficient to fully appraise successor officials of these activities so that they can effectively assume the duties and responsibilities of the office,” he said.

“Such is also sufficient to inform the public for its own protection as well as the protection of the person arrested or detained,” Holtan stated.

He noted the public records law “manifests the legislative intent to keep the work of government open to the critical scrutiny of the public, that essential ingredient of all self government.”

New Ulm Daily Journal

March 14, 1976