Overreaction to News Leak

The last time Los Angeles Police Officer Victor Felix Ramos pointed his city-issued Beretta at his estranged wife, he fired so many shots that he had to reload. The couple’s three young sons cowered in another bedroom as he killed their mother and her new boyfriend. He saved a final bullet for himself.

Now, five years later, a U.S. district judge wants to send to jail the man who leaked documents about how the Los Angeles Police Department routinely mishandled domestic violence complaints against its officers -- including Ramos, who first pointed a gun at his wife three months before he killed her. If a panel of judges from the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upholds the 60-day sentence, whistle-blower Robert Mullally would receive harsher punishment than most of the 70-plus officers described in the documents.

Mullally should not spend a minute in jail.

Yes, he violated a court order that the files not be made public without the judge’s permission. But the information, obtained as part of a lawsuit filed by the family of Melba Ramos, was pertinent to public safety as well as LAPD policy. The suit was settled out of court, but had it gone to trial the information would have been publicly aired.

The suit alleged that the LAPD had engaged in a pattern and practice of civil rights violations by ignoring complaints of domestic violence against its officers. Mullally had been hired as an expert witness by the family’s attorney and had reviewed personnel records that showed, among other slaps on the wrist, one officer getting just a reprimand for raping his girlfriend, another a 10-day suspension for breaking his wife’s nose.

Mullally gave the files to a television reporter. The resulting story prompted the LAPD’s inspector general to investigate and recommend reforms.

U.S. District Judge William D. Keller, in ordering the 60-day sentence, seemed more concerned about defending the sanctity of a court order than about stopping the next Victor Ramos. Even the U.S. attorney prosecuting the case said a prison sentence would be “extreme.”

Two of the 9th Circuit judges who heard the appeal expressed concern that probation alone would signal that anyone could violate a court order and cite conscience. But that’s what rendering judgment is all about -- weighing the public’s interest. Revealing the truth about police getting away scot-free with domestic violence, or about the lies of cigarette companies or about defective tires, saves lives. What greater public interest is there?