Sealed from scrutiny

In a democracy, there can be very few instances that justify the sealing of public records.

This isn't one of them.

As tragic as the Jan. 8 double-murder/suicide in North Augusta was, neither the tragedy of it nor the "interest of human dignity" are legal reasons to withhold public information.

Certainly Aiken County Family Court Judge Peter R. Nuessle had no evidence before him to believe the news media would act irresponsibly. Indeed, evidence has quite strongly pointed to the opposite conclusion: Terry Lee Young - who killed his two sons, 4 and 7, before killing himself - mailed mean-spirited DVDs to three local television stations, but the stations have declined to release their contents, even to other media.

Regardless, whether the media acts with such restraint has nothing to do with the law. And there is no legal justification for sealing the records in this case, begun when Karyn Young filed for divorce Dec. 27.

Fact is, there is every justification for keeping the records open. In sealing them, the judge is only preventing society from determining whether its justice system functioned properly in the case. Sealed records also cannot yield clues about how to prevent such tragedies in the future.

The truth is, it's doubtful there's anything there that would make groundbreaking news. But in this country, that determination should never be made by the government.