More on the Autopsy Photos UPDATE: The battle over Dale Earnhardt’s autopsy photos comes down to the public’s right to know vs. the media’s attempt to sensationalize the racing icon’s death, according to lawyers who laid out their legal arguments Tuesday. Attorneys for Earnhardt’s widow said that close family members have “a constitutional right to privacy to prevent the disclosure” of autopsy photos. They also accused the University of Florida’s student-run newspaper, The Independent Florida Alligator, and the owner of a DeLand-based Web site of seeking the photos “to grab public attention and to sell newspapers, all of which would come at the expense of the Earnhardt family.”(See full story at the Orlando Sentinel) AND Lawyers for the widow of Dale Earnhardt urged a judge Tuesday to keep an injunction in place barring the public release of the race driver’s autopsy photos. But an attorney for The Independent Florida Alligator, a student newspaper at the University of Florida that is seeking to dissolve the injunction, countered that the state has no right to keep the photos sealed. Circuit Judge Joseph Will in Daytona Beach is scheduled to hear oral arguments June 11 over whether the autopsy photos should be made public. The judge also has said he will use the case to test the constitutionality of a new state law that exempts autopsy photos from Florida’s liberal open records law(AP/CNN/SI)(5-30-2001) UPDATE: Florida’s new law restricting access to autopsy photos properly balances the public’s right to open records and the privacy rights of survivors, Gov. Jeb Bush said in legal arguments filed Wednesday. Bush filed a friend-of-the-court brief in defense of the Earnhardt Family Protection Act, which is being challenged in Volusia Circuit Court by the Independent Florida Alligator newspaper in Gainesville.(full story at the Orlando Sentinel)(5-31-2001) NOTE: anyone tiring of the Autopsy stories and updates, don’t complain to me, just bypass the story, they are important and will be posted, don’t like it? oh well…….
