Read the decision by the Attorney General by clicking here.
Kentucky’s Attorney General has ruled that the Whitley County Sheriff’s Department violated the state’s Open Records Act by illegally denying a local woman access to the investigative case file regarding the 2005 death of her son.
Corbin resident Dolly Bunch said she’s been trying "for years" to see how the case involving the death of her son, James S. Bunch, was investigated by police. He was discovered in a mobile home off Bee Creek Road on June 21, 2005. Authorities have always contended his death was the result of a drug overdose. Bunch believes her son was murdered.
Bunch filed a formal request for a copy of the police report regarding the death of her son on March 22. She received no response from the Sheriff’s Department. Former Whitley County Sheriff’s Detective Chuck Davis was the lead investigator in the case. She appealed to Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway to force the Sheriff’s Dept. to produce the report. By law, the Attorney General has the authority to adjudicate disputes between parties over the Open Records Act – a law that allows citizens to inspect, with some exceptions, just about every record produced by government agencies.
Issuing the opinion on behalf of Conway, Assistant Attorney General James M. Herrick wrote that the Sheriff’s Department failed to offer any reason why the records should be withheld from Bunch and could show no documentation she was ever provided with the report.
The Attorney General’s Office contacted Whitley County Attorney Paul Winchester on May 27 to see if there would be any response to Bunch’s appeal.
"Mr. Winchester stated that he thought the police report had been provided to Ms. Bunch and that he would send this office a copy of the transmittal letter. No such letter was provided to this office, and subsequent telephone messages left for Mr. Winchester have not been answered."
Neither Winchester nor Whitley County Sheriff Lawrence Hodge could be reached for comment regarding the decision. Davis said Tuesday he had "no comment" as to why Bunch was not provided the documents when she requested them, other than to say that he has been busy with other higher priority issues.
Davis added that he planned to provide the records to either Bunch or Winchester some time this week. He said the case is technically still an open investigation.
The Open Records Act does provide an exemption for providing investigative case files if disclosure of those records could imperil the case or endanger witnesses. The Sheriff’s Department, however, claimed no such exemption.
Bunch said she’s "hit nothing but brick walls" with investigators and other officials surrounding the case since the death of her son.
"You would think that going on six years now he [Davis] would have had enough time," Bunch said Tuesday. "It don’t take a lot of sense to figure that out. Why can’t they follow the law like everybody else? They should have given it to me when I asked for it because I have a right to see it."
"They can sit down there with their authority and make somebody suffer. They have lied to me the whole way."
Bunch hired a private investigator to look into the case because she felt Davis was not aggressively pursuing leads and had no plans to prosecute others who were in the trailer the day her son died. She claims her son was robbed before his death and that other individuals should have faced drug charges.
"I absolutely believe it was murder," Bunch said. "Even if it is like they said, why was no one ever arrested? I want to know what they got and why nobody was arrested."
Of central importance could be written notes or recordings of interviews Davis conducted with witnesses who were in or near the trailer the day James Bunch died. Dolly Bunch said she’d like to put that with information she’s gathered on her own and present the evidence to the Whitley County grand jury for possible indictments.
The Attorney General’s ruling isn’t the first time Bunch has been denied records by a county agency. In March an Open Records ruling was issued on the Whitley County 911 Center’s denial of a recording of the call made to 911 reporting her son’s death. The 911 Center was forced to admit that it "lost" the recording, stored on two DVDs that held recordings stretching from May through early Dec. 2005. Since the 911 Center didn’t actually have the record, it was not found to have violated the Open Records Act, but the matter was turned over to the state Department of Libraries and Archives for possible investigation. County officials maintain the loss of records was an unfortunate mistake and that recordkeeping at the 911 Center has improved.
Bunch is unconvinced.
"I don’t know if they actually lost it or not. I will say it was pretty convenient," she said. "Something just don’t seem right. I don’t believe anything they tell me anymore."
The most recent ruling is the latest in a string of Open Records Act violations by county agencies in the past year. Twice the 911 Center has been found in violation of the law by not providing recordings to citizens who have requested them.
Davis is now director of the county’s 911 center.
The Sheriff’s Department was also found in violation by not allowing inspection of records regarding guns seized during criminal investigations.
Whitley County can appeal the ruling to circuit court if it disagrees with the Attorney General’s interpretation of the law.
