A FOIA Case: Vincent James Landano (page 3)
Landano and his lawyer had by then opened another front in their battle to clear his name: They filed a Freedom of Information request for Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the investigations into the case. But the 300 pages of files the F.B.I. released to Landano were so heavily redacted that they were useless. A list of the original suspects on one page, for instance, did not have Landano's names but was completely blacked out, hiding whatever the FBI found out about the suspects. The F.B.I. argued it did not have to give Landano a clean copy because, under the Freedom of Information Act, all the information it collects during a criminal investigation is confidential and shielded from disclosure.
For that reason, police departments often sent their investigation files to the FBI to shield them from defendants.
Landano challenged this practice all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court in U.S. Dept. of Justice v. Landano and was rewarded with a 9-0 decision. Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the court, said Congress "did not create a blanket exemption for the F.B.I." when it passed the Freedom of Information Act. The ruling made it possible for Landano's lawyer to examine some 900 pages of FBI documents covering its investigation into the murder.
"The decision was important for American citizens to be able to know how their government operates on a day to day basis," Landano told the New York Times in an interview at the time. "The decision gets the Freedom of Information Act back to its original intent. It is bigger than just my case and accomplishes a greater good."
