The Court ordered the Richland County sheriff to produce records requested by a woman investigating missing money and property taken after her son’s death.

The Court ordered the Richland County sheriff to produce records requested by a woman investigating missing money and property taken after her son’s death.

The Supreme Court of Ohio today ordered the Richland County sheriff to produce three sets of records requested by a woman investigating missing money and property taken after her son’s death. The Supreme Court will determine if the sheriff’s office improperly withheld information.

The Court ordered an in-camera inspection of records, which the sheriff’s office had redacted before turning them over to Andrea Mauk. Mauk is attempting to learn who gave $1,500 in cash and an iPhone to a man identifying himself as the father of Mauk’s son, Damon, who died in a hospital following a June 2023 car accident.

Mauk sought a writ of mandamus from the Court, seeking to compel Sheriff Steve Sheldon and his office to release all records without redactions relating to her son’s death and what transpired at the hospital afterward. She also requested records from the Ohio Department of Public Safety (ODPS). The Court denied most of Mauk’s demands, finding the law enforcement agencies complied with the public records law. However, the Court found three instances where the records law may have been violated.

In a per curiam opinion , the Court stated it would hold its decision on whether Mauk is entitled to damages , attorney fees, and court costs until it reviews the unredacted versions.

Justices R. Patrick DeWine, Jennifer Brunner, Joseph T. Deters, Daniel R. Hawkins, and Megan E. Shanahan joined the per curiam opinion. Justice Patrick F. Fischer concurred in judgment only.

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy concurred in part and dissented in part, finding ODPS’s four-month delay in producing body camera footage was unreasonable and that Mauk should receive $1,000 in statutory damages from the department.

Belongings Missing After Car Accident
The Richland County Sheriff’s Office, the Ohio State Highway Patrol, and the Mifflin Township Fire Department responded to a single-vehicle accident that killed Damon Mauk. Andrea Mauk alleged that a sheriff’s deputy found her son’s iPhone and a wallet with about $1,500 in cash in the vehicle, and the deputy took them to the hospital where Damon was being treated. At the hospital, the deputy allegedly gave the property to a man, who claimed to be Damon’s father. Mauk maintains that Damon’s father was largely absent from his son’s life and noted that neither she nor law enforcement notified Damon’s father of his son’s death.

Mauk has been trying to recover Damon’s property and confirm whether the property was given to Damon’s father. She also stated she has been trying to “lobby the sheriff’s office to tighten up its policies and ensure strangers cannot steal the property of accident victims.”

Mother Seeks Law Enforcement Records
From July to October 2023, Mauk requested multiple records from the sheriff’s office and ODPS. Early on, she asked the sheriff for all reports related to her son’s accident and an inventory of property recovered from his vehicle. She sought bodycam footage from the deputies who gave away her son’s property, along with copies of all policies related to notifying the victim’s next of kin following a fatal accident and the handling of recovered property.

The department provided most of the records but indicated there was no bodycam footage from the hospital where the deputy allegedly handed the property over to a man. She followed up with additional record requests, including access to all public records requests the sheriff’s office received through three specific two-week time periods. The time periods covered dates following the accident when she made her public records requests.

The office provided redacted records for the time periods. Seven days later, Mauk sought a writ of mandamus from the Court, arguing she was entitled to mostly unredacted copies of the public record requests.

Mauk also requested several categories of records from ODPS, including photo and bodycam footage from the highway patrol, along with “everything you have on file for this case.” The department produced almost all the records she sought, except the bodycam footage. She asked the Court to prompt ODPS to produce the bodycam video.

Supreme Court Analyzed Records Request
Under the Ohio Public Records Act, R.C. 149.43, a public office can redact information from a record if federal or state law authorizes or requires the redaction, the per curiam opinion noted. R.C. 149.43(A)(1) excludes certain information from the definition of a public record, and the Court wrote the public office must prove any information redacted from a public record fits within the exception to the law allowing for the material to be excluded from public view.

The sheriff asserts the office redacted Social Security numbers, victim telephone numbers, and confidential law enforcement investigatory records, which  can all be redacted under provisions of the Public Records Act. He also claimed that “personal notes” were redacted, and  cited two prior Supreme Court of Ohio decisions that found notes made by public officials were not public records.

Except for the Social Security numbers, Mauk challenged the rest of the sheriff’s claimed exemptions. The Court found the sheriff produced no evidence to determine whether the redacted information was exempt from disclosure and did not request the opportunity to submit unredacted records to the Court for a closed-door review.

The department captain overseeing public records provided a sworn statement indicating all the requested documents were reviewed before necessary redactions were made, but the Court noted his statement does not explain which exemptions apply to the redactions.

The Court ordered the sheriff to file the documents within 14 days for a confidential review and stated it would then determine whether the office complied with the law.

State’s Bodycam Footage Request Examined
In response to Mauk’s request for bodycam footage from the highway patrol, ODPS provided an affidavit from Nia Jones, a customer service assistant in the central records unit that receives requests for audio and video recordings. Jones noted there were 1,422 pending requests when she provided her affidavit to the Court in response to Mauk’s lawsuit.

Jones indicated ODPS acknowledged receiving the request in July 2023 and downloaded the footage from the bodycams on the same day. In September 2023, it sent Mauk a message providing a link to the written crash report and photos. The message indicated all bodycam and dashcam videos had been sent for review and redaction by the department, and because of the “extensive backlog,” requests are processed in the order they are received.

In mid-November 2023, ODPS sent her a link to the bodycam video and a document listing the reasons why some of the footage was redacted. Mauk received 6 hours and 17 minutes of video and 25 minutes of audio.

Since the department provided the footage a month after Mauk filed the case, the Court found Mauk’s request for an order to produce them was moot. However, Mauk claimed the department violated the records act because it did not maintain records in a way for inspection to be made “within a reasonable period.” The opinion stated the law pertains to instances where the public office’s failure to properly maintain records “prevents” an office from producing a public record. Because ODPS did provide the record, the Court concluded ODPS did not violate the act. The Court also determined that ODPS provided the footage within a reasonable time after Mauk requested it.  Mauk was not entitled to any damages, attorney fees, or court costs from ODPS, the Court concluded

Camera Footage Unduly Delayed, Separate Opinion Finds
Chief Justice Kennedy noted that Mauk requested the bodycam footage from ODPS on July 18, 2023, and received redacted footage on Nov. 16. The chief justice maintained that a four-month response time is not reasonable and that the Court should award Mauk $1,000 in statutory damages, the maximum amount Mauk would be entitled to for her public records request to ODPS.

ODPS told the Court that the delayed response time was due to the fact that the department typically has 1,400 audio and video requests pending at any given time. In support of its delay, ODPS hypothesized that if each request involved five hours of video, then it would take about 7,000 hours to review the videos. The chief justice disagreed with this rationale, writing that ODPS provided only a hypothetical and not actual evidence regarding the average length of time it takes the redactions unit to process a records request or the average amount of footage that must be reviewed for each request.

The department also indicated that it has specific audit logs for audio and video requests documenting when those requests are processed.  Here, however, ODPS did not provide a log for Mauk’s video request. Chief Justice Kennedy wrote that the lack of the audit log implied that ODPS did not timely review and redact the footage Mauk requested.

Additionally, in support of the delay, ODPS cited Supreme Court decisions regarding reasonable response times to public records requests, including the 2016 State ex rel. Cincinnati Enquirer v. Deters decision in which the Court found that a six-business day response time for bodycam footage was reasonable. The department also cited two other cases in which the Court found that a two-month response time was reasonable to review and redact final autopsy reports and a three-month response time was reasonable to review and redact multiple personnel files of police officers.

Chief Justice Kennedy noted that in each of those cases the respondent provided the requested public records in less time than the four-month period ODPS took to review the bodycam footage that Mauk requested.  “Further, ODPS does not point to any case in which this court has concluded that a four-month response time constituted a reasonable response time for a public office to produce records requested under the Public Records Act. This case should not change that,” she wrote.

2023-1300. State ex rel. Mauk v. Sheldon, Slip Opinion No. 2025-Ohio-1221.

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