## Facts

- John Markle committed a highly publicized murder–suicide in Little Rock, Arkansas.
- Mercedes McCambridge, Markle’s mother, was an award-winning actress and public figure.
- During the police investigation, officers found and collected documents connected to Markle, including:
  - two handwritten letters from Markle to his attorney admitting the crime,
  - Markle’s diary,
  - a handwritten letter from Markle to McCambridge expressing anger toward her, and
  - miscellaneous handwritten notes.
- The City of Little Rock also possessed photographs of the crime scene as part of the police investigative materials.
- McCambridge filed suit to restrain the City from releasing the letters, notes, and crime-scene photographs under Arkansas’s open-records law, arguing disclosure would violate her constitutional right to privacy because the materials were personal and likely to cause embarrassment and harm if made public.
- The trial court ruled that the requested items were subject to disclosure and ordered the City to release them.
- McCambridge appealed.

## Issues

1. Does the federal constitutional right to privacy limit disclosure of items that otherwise qualify for release under Arkansas’s open-records law?
2. If a constitutional privacy interest is implicated, does that interest prevent disclosure of Markle’s letters, diary, notes, and crime-scene photographs contained in the police investigative materials?

## Decision

- The Arkansas Supreme Court recognized that, in some circumstances, the federal constitutional right to privacy can limit compelled disclosure under Arkansas’s open-records law.
- The court treated “informational privacy” as potentially protecting highly personal matters from government disclosure and applied a balancing approach rather than an automatic rule for or against release.
- The court concluded that, even assuming the writings and images involved personal matters and would be embarrassing or painful if publicized, the public interest in disclosure was weighty because the records concerned a major, widely reported criminal event and the conduct of the police investigation.
- The court affirmed the trial court’s order requiring disclosure of the requested materials.

## Legal Principles

- Arkansas’s open-records law may be constrained by the federal constitutional right to privacy when government disclosure would reveal highly personal information.
- A court assessing a privacy claim must first determine whether the information concerns personal matters and whether disclosure would be harmful or embarrassing to a reasonable person.
- If a protectable privacy interest is shown, the court must balance that privacy interest against the public interest in access to records that bear on governmental activity, including law-enforcement investigations.
- A requester’s right to access may prevail where disclosure materially serves public understanding of a major event and the performance of public officials, even when the information is painful for family members and potentially embarrassing.

## Conclusion

McCambridge v. City of Little Rock holds that constitutional informational privacy can, in theory, restrict disclosure under Arkansas’s open-records law, but the court will weigh the claimed privacy harm against the public’s interest in transparency about police activity; applying that balance here, the Arkansas Supreme Court allowed release of Markle’s letters, diary, notes, and crime-scene photographs from the murder–suicide investigation.


McCambridge v. City of Little Rock, 766 S.W.2d 909 (1989)