I've been doing so research on this horrible case. Consider some interesting details that go beyond simply posting this photos on the web:
Shortly after her death, her father, who had raced to the accident scene. got an email on his cellphone. Newsweek summarizes:
Onto his screen popped his daughter's bloodied face, captioned with the words "Woohoo Daddy! Hey daddy, I'm still alive."
And that wasn't the end of the taunting, Newsweek reports:
Apparently, photos of the crash scene were circulating around town, via e-mail. Soon they showed up on Web sites, many of them dedicated to hard-core pornography and death. A fake MySpace page was set up in Nikki's name, where she was identified as a "stupid :censored::censored::censored::censored::censored:." "That spoiled rich girl deserved it," one commenter wrote. "What a waste of a Porsche," announced another.
NICE, HUH? How did this happen in the first place?
How did the photos get to the internet? A horrible failure of public trust and duty. California Highway Patrol dispatchers Thomas O'Donnell and Aaron Reich took the official death scene photos and emailed them to family and friends. They later said they did so as a safety effrot, wanting young drivers to see the effects of speed and drugs.
The two dispatchers were suspended for 25 days without pay. Reich later resigned, for what his attorney said were other reaons.
But the damage they did has gone well beyond 25 days and a few emails to a family and friends list. Once something is released into the wilds of the internet, there's no telling where it will go.
So. We all agree that the relaese of these photos on teh net and the subsequent attacks on th family and disregard for the life of this girl is HORRIBLE. But is it illegal? Read:
Leaking the official photos of the crime scene didn't serve as a teaching tool, but instead a poisoned knife to taunt a family and mock a teenaged girl who exercised bad judgment and died because of it. Here's an interesting question--if the driver of that car had been a very ugly poor person driving a junker of a car, would the entire mess have happened? I don't think so.
The Catsouras family sued the California Highway Patrol for a variey of charges, including negligence, privacy invasion and infliction of emotional harm. Their case was dismissed by a superior court judge, but the family isn't giving up. Their appeal is pending.
The leaked photos may wind up as a landmark case about privacy. Newsweek examined the validity of the case:
"Many, many courts have concluded that families of deceased individuals do have privacy rights to the deceased," says Daniel Solove, a law professor at George Washington University. In particular, he cites a 2004 case involving death-scene photos of former deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster, who died in 1993 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could deny Freedom of Information Act requests for the photos based on a family's right to survivor privacy. "I'm totally perplexed at how the [California] court concludes there was no duty to preserve this family's privacy," he says.
The only benifit these photos have is within the Emergency Services community as a training tool, and even then I could make an arguement that as an EMT these taught me nothing. The benifit to the community just ain't there. Sickos see these photos as "COOL" and take nothing away benificial. The b*astards who continued to post these photos on line (porn sites? really), taunt the family, and casue more harm than good sould be shot. The CHP folks (who I have never had much respect for) are IDIOTS. There "bad judgement" had horrible consequences and they deserve to be fired and banished from public services; a duty they ignored the second they started hurting the public and their department.
