The following excerpt is from the August 15, 2012 edition of the Evansville Courier & Press:
EVANSVILLE [Indiana] — A Pike County resident and the Evansville Courier & Press are suing the Vanderburgh County Health Department to obtain access to cause of death information contained on death certificates maintained by the health department.
The newspaper and Rita Ward of Winslow, Ind., contend the death certificates are public records, while the health department interprets state law to require it to restrict access to them.
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Ward said she was prompted to investigate what was behind the change when the newspaper stopped publishing death causes. She said she is interested because of the public health implications the information might reveal, such as possible links to smoking-related illnesses.
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After the Courier & Press quit publishing the information, Ward requested the records from the health department in writing but was denied it in a letter written by Joseph Harrison Jr., attorney for Vanderburgh County. In that letter, Harrison wrote the law requires the purchaser of a death certificate to have a direct interest in the matter.
Ward then filed a complaint with the Indiana Public Access Counselor, who gave a nonbinding opinion in her favor.
Public Access Counselor Joseph Hoage said the requirements in the law Harrison cited were made by the Legislature beginning in January 2011 and applied to the state’s death registration system.
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Hoage based his opinion on a 1998 opinion from the Indiana Attorney General’s Office that said death certificates are public record. That opinion was based in part on a 1975 Indiana Court of Appeals decision upholding former Vanderburgh Circuit Court Judge William Miller’s decision in a 1973 case in which a reporter from the former Evansville Press sought a death record from the health department.
The Courier & Press requested the death records again after Hoage gave his opinion but was denied by the health department. The lawsuit was then filed…
I have ordered and received 2 death certificates from Indiana that did show cause of death. I received them in a very timely manner after ordering. One death in 1956 in Vanderburgh county, one death in 1995 in Lake county. Both were of family members, maybe that had something to do with it.