PIERRE, S.D. (South Dakota Searchlight) – Officers who shoot when threatened can shield their names from public view under the victims’ rights clause of the South Dakota Constitution, the state Supreme Court has ruled.
The Wednesday decision came in one of the criminal cases filed against Samir Albaidhani, who’s been convicted in one county and has an open case in another for a series of interactions with law enforcement last year.
Albaidhani fired on and struck one of the two Sioux Falls police officers who tried to take him into custody on felony warrants last spring, according to an incident report from the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation.
Both officers fired back at Albaidhani, who would later lead law enforcement on a 30-mile chase that ended in Union County. There, he fired on Highway Patrol officers but missed. A Union County jury convicted Albaidhani in March of three counts of attempted first-degree murder against law enforcement, three counts of aggravated assault against law enforcement and one count of aggravated eluding.
Thursday’s state Supreme Court ruling is linked to the unresolved charges against Albaidhani in Minnehaha County. His attorneys in Sioux Falls say their client’s right to a fair trial could be compromised without public disclosure of the names of the Sioux Falls officers.
Early on in the Minnehaha County case, the officers who shot back at Albaidhani invoked their Marsy’s Law rights to have their names and initials withheld from public court filings.
Voters approved Marsy’s Law in 2016, creating a set of rights for crime victims and their family members that can be invoked upon request to protect them from harassment, keep them notified of court proceedings and be consulted during plea negotiations, among other things.
Since the amendment’s passage, police who’ve shot or shot at members of the public have used it to protect their names from disclosure, arguing they’re victims of a crime because they were defending themselves when threatened with violence. The South Dakota Attorney General’s Office has ruled every officer-involved shooting in the state justified for more than two decades.
Circuit Court Judge Susan Sabers sided with Albaidhani. She ruled that it would take more than a name to open up the officers to harassment, and that officers cannot be viewed as crime victims when acting in their official capacity. The names and initials were sealed provisionally prior to her ruling, and have remained under seal as the city’s local police union appealed it.
The state’s high court ruled in favor of the officers, who argued that Albaidhani’s lawyers can request and review information about the officers through non-public court filings and, if necessary, question them during closed-door court proceedings.
In a 5-0 ruling authored by Justice Robert Gusinky, the high court decided that names or initials might be used to locate and harass crime victims, overruling the local judge.
“Under the plain reading of Marsy’s Law, a victim is ‘a person against whom a crime or delinquent act is committed,’” the ruling says. “A law enforcement officer is a ‘person’ under every reasonable interpretation of the word.”
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