Senators excludes some 911 calls photos from public record

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By Jim Tharpe

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The state Senate on Tuesday added 911 emergency calls that reveal a victim’s "personal suffering" to a list of items that would be excluded from Georgia’s Open Records Act.

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Meredith Emerson, a 24-year-old University of Georgia graduate from Buford, was abducted Jan. 1, 2008, while hiking with her dog Ella on Blood Mountain trail in North Georgia.

Pat B. Mitchell Meredith Emerson, a 24-year-old University of Georgia graduate from Buford, was abducted Jan. 1, 2008, while hiking with her dog Ella on Blood Mountain trail in North Georgia.

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Senators added the exclusion to a bill that was prompted by the murder of graduate student Meredith Emerson and the subsequent request by a Hustler magazine reporter for the gruesome crime scene photos.

Senators approved the amended House bill by a vote of 50-0. The House earlier approved legislation that would exempt from the Open Records Act any crime scene photos showing nude or dismembered bodies. The Senate's version of the bill must now go back to the House, where sponsors say will likely try to remove the 911 provision.

"We did not want that in there," said state Rep. Jill Chambers (R-Atlanta), the bill's House sponsor.

Douglas County residents had urged their senators to add the 911 exclusion after the release of audio tapes in which flood victims pleaded with rescue personnel for help.

A reporter for Hustler magazine ignited outrage among Emerson’s family, law enforcement officials and state lawmakers when he requested the crime scene photos. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has refused to turn over the photos. That open records request could be resolved in court.

The legislation now making its way through the state Legislature would apply to future cases.

Emerson, a 24-year-old University of Georgia graduate from Buford, was abducted Jan. 1, 2008, while hiking with her dog Ella on Blood Mountain trail in North Georgia.

Florida-born vagrant and Army veteran Gary Michael Hilton beat Emerson to death and cut off her head. Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty against him if he took investigators to Emerson's remains. Hilton, now serving life in prison, is awaiting trial in the decapitation of a Florida woman.

Across the nation, the publication of crime-scene and autopsy photos has prompted widespread controversy.

In Florida, judges have refused to release Dale Earnhardt's autopsy photos, agreeing with the race car driver's widow that making the pictures public would cause the family pain. Georgia's Open Records Act prohibits the release of autopsy photos unless consent is obtained from a victim's family or there's a court order finding that the public benefit of the photos' disclosure outweighs the family's privacy interests. Crime scene photos, however, fall into a gray area.

A California appeals court recently criticized the state Highway Patrol's release of grisly photos of Nikki Catsouras, 18, who died in an Oct. 31, 2006, crash while driving her father's Porsche. Photos of the teenager's decapitated corpse were published on more than 2,500 Internet Web sites. In a Jan. 29 decision, the California court said the release of such photos "would cause devastating trauma" to the Catsouras family.