UPDATE: The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3d Circuit has affirmed this lower court decision barring the District Attorney from prosecuting this grand-mother for sharing on social media any child abuse documents relating to her grandson and his death. Law.com (Reporter Riley Brennan) reports.
STORY: "Court sides with grandma over D.A. in Dante Mullinix free speech case," by Reporter Aimee Ambrose, published by The York Dispatch, on July 19, 2023.
GIST: "Free speech rights trump a state law that York County prosecutors could have used against a woman for sharing child welfare documents related to the death of her grandson, 2-year-old Dante Mullinix, a federal appeals court panel ruled.
Wednesday’s ruling involved a lawsuit that spun off from the case of Tyree Bowie, who was ultimately acquitted in the September 2018 death of Mullinix. That decision, by three judges of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia, may set a precedent for other free-speech cases.
The panel upheld a federal court’s injunction that barred the York County District Attorney’s Office from charging Dante’s grandmother, Victoria Schrader, in case she publicly re-posts confidential child welfare records involving the boy.
The ruling, though, also sent the injunction back to the lower court to craft a narrower injunction.
“Schrader wants answers for her grandson’s death. In search of truth, she seeks to criticize those in power by publishing the very information they had before his death,” Judge Stephanos Bibas wrote in the opinion.
“Though Pennsylvania’s Child Protective Services Law serves weighty interests, it cannot be used to punish her for doing so.”
A spokesperson for District Attorney Dave Sunday's office did not have an immediate response to the decision Wednesday afternoon.
Dante died days after he was brought to a local hospital and not breathing. He was in the care of his mother’s friend, Bowie, at the time. Bowie rushed the child to the hospital the night of Sept. 6.
Prosecutors alleged, based on injuries seen on Dante that night and subsequent medical opinions, that Bowie must have savagely attacked and beaten him.
Bowie’s attorney argued during his trial in December 2022 that Dante choked on a cookie and lost consciousness while Bowie watched him.
The defense also alleged Dante’s mother, Leah Mullinix, and other people she knew were likely responsible for her son’s injuries and neglect, including failing to seek medical treatment for a painful infection, which ultimately contributed to his death.
After hearing nearly a month of testimony, a jury acquitted Bowie on murder and child endangerment charges.
The federal district court in Harrisburg, around the same time, was also grappling with connected free speech cases brought by Dante’s aunt, Sarah Mullinix, and Schrader, her mother.
Mullinix was an outspoken critic of the York County District Attorney’s Office and York City Police since Bowie was arrested five years ago, days after Dante died.
She alleged law enforcement unjustly prosecuted Bowie, including jailing him for four years before his trial, and thus failed to seek appropriate justice for her nephew.
She also accused York County’s Children Youth and Families agency of failing to properly take action on complaints made by her and others about Dante’s welfare in the weeks before he died.
While Bowie was jailed and facing murder charges, he sent Mullinix documents from the CYF investigation that were in a state database, which his attorney had received as part of the discovery process.
Mullinix then posted the records to her Facebook group in 2020.
The D.A.'s office caught wind and charged her with a misdemeanor count of unauthorized release of information under the child protective services law.
The case was later dropped, but it led to Mullinix filing a federal free speech lawsuit against Sunday and the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office, as well as one against York County Court of Common Pleas Judge Gregory Snyder in the autumn of 2021.
Schrader filed a similar suit against Sunday and the attorney general, seeking an injunction from prosecution if she re-posted the documents Mullinix already put online on arguments the state law would unconstitutionally interfere with her First Amendment rights.
A federal judge sided with Schrader and granted the injunction.
Sunday appealed, and the case advanced to the U.S. appeals court in January. He argued the case wasn’t a constitutional issue and that his office was more concerned about the release of confidential information than blocking discussion of the topic.
The appeals panel, though, found Schrader had standing on the grounds of her case that she intended to share documents she has to make points critical of the homicide case, but state law stood in the way of that and she could face prosecution as a result.
On another point, the panel found Sunday’s office failed to meet a strict burden to prove a content-based law, like the child protective services law, overrides free speech to serve state interests in order to justify prosecution.
Sunday also didn’t show alternatives to prosecution were pursued, such as potential fines or seeking a protection order early on to prevent Bowie from sharing documents in the first place, according to the appeals opinion.
“The state could have prevented this information from entering the public domain, but it failed to do so,” Judge Bibas wrote. “It cannot now use prosecution to fix its mistake.”
While the panel found the injunction Schrader sought was properly issued, the judges also tossed part of Schrader’s case. They found she lacked standing on arguments over documents she doesn’t have, finding them too speculative.
The panel vacated the injunction, and then sent it back to a federal court judge to re-enter a narrower injunction for Schrader’s case.
Meanwhile, yet another associated case is still waiting to be resolved, one that charged Leah Mullinix for her role in Dante’s neglect leading up to his death.
The 26-year-old pleaded guilty to a felony count of child endangerment in January, a few weeks after Bowie’s acquittal.
She has not yet been sentenced, though, as the date has been postponed until Oct. 4, court documents show, amid motions by her attorney to seek a mental health examination for her."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-1234880143/
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