Supreme Court weighing release of 38 Studios grand jury records.

Byline: Barry Bridges

Counsel for the governor and attorney general faced off at the Rhode Island Supreme Court on Nov. 7, armed with their best arguments on whether the grand jury records of the 38 Studios investigation should be publicly released.

Claire J. Richards made the case on behalf of Gov. Gina Raimondo, who is seeking the release in the name of transparency. Richards focused on the "immense public interest" generated by the case and emphasized the administration's view that the Superior Court has the inherent authority to release the documents.

Arguing otherwise was Assistant Attorney General Michael W. Field, who said that Superior Court Presiding Judge Alice B. Gibney got it right when she denied the governor's request in 2017. He reiterated the "bedrock principle" of grand jury secrecy and reminded the justices that the Supreme Court's role in the appeal was simply to determine whether Gibney abused her discretion in arriving at her decision.

'Full accounting' sought

The statewide grand jury reviewing the 38 Studios debacle sat for 18 months but ended in 2015 with no criminal indictments. Taxpayers were left on the hook for millions of dollars. At the conclusion of the state's civil case against various defendants involved in the deal, the governor filed a petition in the Superior Court seeking the complete disclosure of all 38 Studios grand jury material, which was ultimately denied by Gibney. That denial was the basis of the governor's current appeal to the Supreme Court.

After briefly addressing questions from the justices on the threshold issue of Raimondo's standing to bring the action, both sides largely focused on whether a release of grand jury material can be made outside of the exceptions enumerated in Superior Court Criminal Rule 6(e) and whether Gibney appropriately balanced the state and federal policy factors that courts have enunciated over the years.

"I think the court should extend a great solicitude to grand jury records, but in this case the public deserves a full accounting of what happened to the public funds involved," Richards argued. "It is not the case that the governor seeks the release willy-nilly. This is a once-in-a-lifetime circumstance."

She added that concerns about the records should be lessened given previous releases related to the 38 Studios deal after the civil trial.

Justice Frances X. Flaherty questioned why the court would bother to break the sacrosanct rule of secrecy if the information...