The Massachusetts Newspaper Publishers Association has joined with Harvard Law School’s Cyberlaw Clinic, the Citizen Media Law Project and a coalition of New England media and advocacy organizations to file an amicus curiae brief to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court seeking to unseal inquest documents in the Amy Bishop case. After a Superior Court judge refused the Boston Globe’s request to unseal the documents, the newspaper filed this appeal.

Bishop was a professor at the University of Alabama who allegedly shot and kiled three of her colleagues during a faculty meeting in 2010. The shooting sparked a new inquiry by prosecutors in Massachusetts into the 1986 fatal shooting of Bishop’s brother Seth. The Norfolk County district attorney initiated an inquest to investigate the shooting, which resulted in a grand jury issuing an indictment against Bishop for first-degree murder.

After the inquest was concluded, the Globe sought release of the inquest transcript and report. The Superior Court denied the request.

A more detailed description of the case and the legal issues it involves is available from the Citizen Media Law Project. A PDF copy of the brief is available for download.