A Nashville judge refused to allow the publication of writings left behind by the assailant who killed six people at a Christian school in the city last year, siding with families of surviving children. The question of whether to publish the journals and other documents left behind by the assailant in the attack on the Covenant School has been at center of an emotional legal dispute. The ruling will be appealed. Grieving parents, most families of surviving students, the school and its affiliated church warned that facilitating unfettered access to the writings would further traumatize their community, and risk inspiring copycats. Journalists, gun rights groups and a Republican state lawmaker argued that public records law required their release as the Tennessee General Assembly remains deeply divided over how to respond to the shooting, reports the New York Times.
Police and city officials have declined to release the writings, citing an ongoing investigation. Officers killed the assailant at the school soon after the first 911 calls. The legal battle has stretched on for months, prolonged by a procedural argument over whether the families, the school and the church had a right to intervene after news outlets, gun rights groups and a Republican state senator sued for the release of the writings. “We keep hearing this phrase, ‘We don’t want someone speaking from the grave,’” said Douglas Pierce, a lawyer for the National Police Association, a nonprofit supportive of gun rights. He said the shooter “is not going to do anything to anyone else now, but we can learn valuable lessons from those documents.” When photographs of three pages were leaked to a conservative political commentator, the excerpts showed a hateful intent to target the school and its students. More excerpts were published in the Tennessee Star, a conservative outlet, in June. Those opposed to publishing the writing said that the leaks proved that any release would raise the prominence of the shooter and allow the writings to spread.
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