Opinion
Opinion By: Jack Conway, Attorney General; James M. Herrick, Assistant Attorney General
Open Records Decision
The question presented in this appeal is whether Kentucky Correctional Psychiatric Center ("KCPC"), a maximum-security facility operated by the Department for Mental Health and Mental Retardation Services, Cabinet for Health and Family Services, violated the Open Records Act in the disposition of Jeremy Henley's January 6, 2014, request for a copy of the evaluation performed on him at the Pennyroyal Mental Health Center. According to the prior decisions of this office, KCPC properly denied Mr. Henley access to his pre-trial competency evaluation on the basis of KRS 61.878(1)(l), incorporating KRS 26A.200 into the Open Records Act. We therefore find that KCPC did not violate the Act in the disposition of Mr. Henley's request.
Mr. Henley's request was received by KCPC on January 8, 2014. On that same date, KCPC's health information management director, Sharon W. Proctor, responded that the court order directing KCPC to conduct his competency evaluation specifies the persons to whom the information can be distributed, and Mr. Henley is not included among those persons. She cited KRS 26A.200, incorporated into the Open Records Act by KRS 61.878(1)(l), for the proposition that Mr. Henley's competency evaluation, as a record created at the direction of a court and placed under distribution restrictions by the court's order, is under the exclusive jurisdiction of the court and therefore exempt from disclosure.
The Attorney General has dealt with this identical issue on multiple occasions and has followed the reasoning expressed in KCPC's response. We therefore adopt one of the latest of these, 08-ORD-067, a copy of which is attached hereto, as the basis for our decision in the present appeal. Also attached are copies of 04-ORD-021 and 99-ORD-109, in each of which we reached a similar result. Under these prior decisions, KCPC did not violate the Open Records Act.
We hereby consolidate this appeal with one filed simultaneously by Mr. Henley against the Pennyroyal Mental Health Center over the same record, as the same law applies and the same result obtains. For this reason, we need not decide whether the Pennyroyal Mental Health Center is a "public agency" as defined in KRS 61.870(1).
A party aggrieved by this decision may appeal it by initiating action in the appropriate circuit court pursuant to KRS 61.880(5) and KRS 61.882. Pursuant to KRS 61.880(3), the Attorney General should be notified of any action in circuit court, but should not be named as a party in that action or in any subsequent proceeding.
Distributed to:
Jeremy Henley, # 260990Sharon W. Proctor, RHIAMona S. Womack, Esq.