It’s been a dizzying few weeks in the public records case before Davidson County Chancellor I’Ashea Myles.

For more than a year now, Myles has been considering whether the public records law requires the Metro Nashville Police Department to release files from its investigation into The Covenant School shooting. Six people were killed, including three children.

Now, however, as everyone has been awaiting a long-overdue ruling, the chancellor has turned her attention to a leak of police records to a local conservative news website, The Tennessee Star. She is clearly hot about it.

On June 10, she ordered Tennessee Star Editor Michael Patrick Leahy, one of the plaintiffs in the case, to appear personally in court on June 17 and show in a “show cause hearing” why his “publication” of articles based on leaked documents “does not” subject him to contempt proceedings and sanctions.

The court two days later expanded her order to include a representative of Metro Government to appear at the show cause hearing “so this Court may ascertain the status and veracity of any alleged leak.”

Then, a Nashville police lieutenant delivered a declaration to the court suggesting the leaker is former lieutenant Garet Davidson, who also just happened to file a whistleblower complaint against his former employer.

The problem with the court’s witch hunt is that truthful information about The Covenant School shooting is being reported to the public from records that should already be public and that the public has a right to know.

But instead of focusing on fairly upholding the public records law and making a ruling expeditiously, the chancellor is now focused on finding and punishing the “leaker” and possibly a conservative press organization that published the material.

Here is what we have come to find out about the shooter’s motives

The jurist’s attention and energy is misguided. In my view, the chancellor’s job is to decide whether the public records law requires the police department to disclose records. Her job is not to assert control over a news organization’s news gathering.  And it’s certainly not to threaten the press with contempt proceedings for writing about the Covenant case and publishing lawfully obtained and truthful information that, in this instance, is clearly in the public interest.

One revelation, for example, from the leaked records, is that the shooter, Audrey Hale, told her mental health providers at Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital multiple times that she wanted to be a school shooter and kill her father.

A leaked police summary of records labeled “Vandy Psych” obtained from the Vanderbilt hospital specifies pages of her medical records that say: “Recent thoughts of going into a school and shooting a bunch of people,” “Homicidal thoughts with a plan,” “Has fantasies of being a school shooter,” “Has homicidal thoughts, such as shooting at a school,” and “Homicidal thoughts of killing her father.” There is much more.

Other revelations from the now more than 40 Tennessee Star stories based on the leaked records:

• The FBI suggested that Metro Police could destroy the shooter’s writings to prevent the public from ever seeing them;

• One psychologist who treated shooter Audrey Hale tried to get her involuntarily committed at the Vanderbilt psychiatric hospital after Hale expressed violent fantasies;

• Hale had been planning the attack for a very long time and thought she could have been discovered; and

• Hale had been treated over the course of 22 years by Vanderbilt Psychiatric. (Hale was 28 years old when she attacked the school and was killed by responding police.)

Attorneys pleaded with the judge to make a ruling

At the Monday show cause hearing, Myles said she had been ready to issue a 60-plus page ruling when a television news reporter called her about the stories in The Tennessee Star.

During the hearing, Leahy’s attorney, Daniel Horwitz, tried to ascertain why she thought his client might be subject to contempt proceedings. But Myles refused to clarify, said his arguments weren’t “ripe” and cut him off from speaking further.

Myles had already denied Horwitz’s emergency motion to set aside the show cause hearing. Horwitz had argued, among other things, that the Tennessee shield law protects the press from revealing its sources and any order to not publish material lawfully obtained would be “prior restraint” and violate the free press clause in the First Amendment.

During the hearing, Myles kept open the possibility that she will appoint an attorney to investigate and initiate contempt proceedings. But she spent most of the hearing asking all the attorneys about whether the leak made the public records case “moot” and if anyone thought there was a violation of a court order or interference with the court’s proceedings. All of the attorneys urged her to make her ruling and some suggested that the leak was a separate matter and someone other than the court can address it.

If this case ends up being about the court punishing the press or even a leaker, it will have gone far beyond where it started.

The public has a right to know what led to the shooting

The Tennessee Public Records Act allows a requester whose public records request was denied by a government entity “to petition for access to any such record and to obtain judicial review of the actions taken to deny the access.”

The statute goes on to say: “The court, in ruling upon the petition of any party proceeding hereunder, shall render written findings of fact and conclusions of law and shall be empowered to exercise full injunctive remedies and relief to secure the purposes and intentions of this section, and this section shall be broadly construed so as to give the fullest possible public access to public records.”

The public does have a right to know about what led up to the shooting. Could it have been prevented?

If the sliver of information from the leaked police records is any indication, there’s a lot that’s been kept from the public.

Deborah Fisher is executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government. This column is a modification of an earlier column published June 14 before the show cause hearing.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville Covenant shooting: Judge targets media, keeps public in dark