Judge Orders Post-Dispatch Not to Publish Info About Accused Cop Killer

In a rare case of prior restraint, Judge Elizabeth Hogan says the daily may not report on a key report until after Thomas Kinworthy’s trial

Sep 19, 2023 at 10:51 am

This morning a judge barred the Post-Dispatch from publishing information from a report accidentally made public.

Courtesy Kara Wilson

This morning a judge barred the Post-Dispatch from publishing information from a report that had been accidentally made public.

A St. Louis judge Friday issued a ruling barring the St. Louis Post-Dispatch from publishing any information from a mental health evaluation of an accused cop killer until his trial has concluded.

The controversy around the mental health report has been before Circuit Court Judge Elizabeth Hogan for four months now — and stands as a rare case of prior restraint barring the daily newspaper from publishing.

In May, a mental health evaluation of Thomas Kinworthy compiled by prosecutors was accidentally made public. The evaluation had been conducted on Kinworthy as part of a potential defense of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. Kinworthy is accused of killing St. Louis police officer Tamarris Bohannon in the Tower Grove South neighborhood in August 2020.

Kinworthy's mental health evaluation was only briefly publicly available, but in that time Post-Dispatch reporter Katie Kull spotted it, then called the Missouri public defender's office inquiring about it.

The public defender's office responded by getting a temporary restraining order against the newspaper, preventing it from publishing the report or any information based upon it.

In a hearing last month, the report was described as "very long and very detailed." Public defender Brian Horneyer called its details “salacious,” saying that if the public became aware of them it would taint the pool of potential jurors.

At that hearing, the Post-Dispatch's attorney, Joseph Martineau, pointed out that it's not uncommon for there to be cases with significant media attention in which courts still manage to seat impartial juries. He cited the forthcoming trial of former President Donald Trump as well as the murder trial of Bryan Kohberger, accused of killing four University of Idaho students last November, as two prominent examples.

However, Judge Hogan's six-page ruling this morning sided with the public defender's office. It barred the paper from publishing the report or anything based on it until "the presentation of evidence" in Kinworthy's trial has concluded. Hogan cited what she called the necessity of protecting "interests of the highest order," including the confidentiality of mental health records and Kinworthy's right to a fair trial.

Martineau tells the RFT this morning that he is still consulting with the paper about next steps.

Speaking about the case on St. Louis Public Radio last month, prominent local attorney Javad Khazaeli pushed back on the argument that the mental health evaluation, now that it’s been released, needs to remain out of sight.

"Once it's out, it's out," Khazaeli said of the report.

Khazaeli did suggest one way forward for the paper.

"They could just publish it and see what happens," he said. "We have seen repeatedly, judges order reporters to give up sources and virtually across the board the reporters say, ‘My commitment is not to the criminal justice system but to the first amendment.’ That is another option."

Editor's note: A previous version of this story referred erroneously to the date of Judge Hogan's ruling. It was Friday, September 15. We regret the error.