Podcast Recommendation: “Accused” by Amber Hunt and Amanda Rossmann

This weekend, I listened to the first two episodes of the Accused podcast. Here is the Cincinnati Enquirer‘s description of the podcast:

The Oxford Police Department approached the 1978 stabbing and strangulation of Elizabeth Andes as an open-and-shut case. This mindset was bolstered by the next-day confession of Andes’ boyfriend, Bob Young, who admitted to the slaying after 15 straight hours of interrogation. But Young immediately recanted the confession, saying he was tired, traumatized and confused. Two separate juries – one criminal, the other civil – found him not guilty of the crime.

But Oxford Police refused to re-investigate the case, telling reporters at the time that the juries got it wrong and Young got away with murder. Several of the players to this day maintain that they’d charged the right guy.

That’s where journalists Amber Hunt and Amanda Rossmann have stepped in. The two have dedicated a year re-investigating the case – more thoroughly, it turns out, than did the initial detectives. They’ve tracked down people that police weren’t able to find and uncovered information overlooked in 1978. The resulting podcast, titled “Accused: The Unsolved Murder of Elizabeth Andes,” lays out the story while uncovering strong leads never pursued by police.

I highly recommend it.

The first episode introduces an intriguing aspect of the case and explains the necessity of the podcast. After Young was exonerated, he moved, pursuant to Section 2953.52 of the Ohio Revised Code, to have all of the official records pertaining to the case against him sealed. Pursuant to Section 2953.53 of that same C0de, the court thereafter entered an order sealing those records. And then…nothing. According to Hunt, “Butler County officials interpreted this seal to mean that the crime itself could no longer legally be investigated.”

Hunt heavily scrutinizes this interpretation in the first episode, and I agree with her ultimate conclusion that the interpretation of the order doesn’t hold water. It simply makes no sense that the order to seal means that the police were precluded from pursuing an alternate suspect. Indeed, the whole point of the order to seal is to close the book on the exonerated suspect so that attention can be turned to alternate suspects.

But can what is contained in that book be used to facilitate the subsequent investigation? Interestingly, this was an open question until last year. In State v. Vanzandt, 990 N.E.2d 692 (2013), an Ohio appellate court had to interpret Section 2953.53(D), which states that 

The sealed official records to which such an index pertains shall not be available to any person, except that the official records of a case that have been sealed may be made available to the following persons for the following purposes:

(1) To the person who is the subject of the records upon written application, and to any other person named in the application, for any purpose

(2) To a law enforcement officer who was involved in the case, for use in the officer’s defense of a civil action arising out of the officer’s involvement in that case;

(3) To a prosecuting attorney or the prosecuting attorney’s assistants to determine a defendant’s eligibility to enter a pre-trial diversion program established pursuant to section 2935.36 of the Revised Code;

(4) To a prosecuting attorney or the prosecuting attorney’s assistants to determine a defendant’s eligibility to enter a pre-trial diversion program under division (E)(2)(b) of section 4301.69 of the Revised Code.

In other words, Section 2953.53(D) provides four exceptions that allow certain individuals to access sealed records for specified purposes. In Vanzandt, the State moved to unseal records relating to the defendant’s prior acquittal to prove that he was guilty of retaliating against a witness, which is not a prescribed purpose under Section 2953.53(D). The appellate court agreed with the trial court’s decision to unseal the records, finding that a court’s authority to seal records extends beyond Section 2953, meaning that a court’s authority to unseal records also extends beyond the four exceptions listed in Section 2953.53(D).

Last year, however, the Supreme Court of Ohio reversed in State v. Vanzandt, 28 N.E.3d 1267 (Ohio 2015), holding that, “[w]hen a statutory provision imposing a mandatory obligation has specifically enumerated exceptions, a court does not have discretion to create additional exceptions.” I think I agree with the court’s conclusion, but I would argue that the Ohio legislature should add a fifth exception under Section 2953.53(D) that allows State officials to access sealed records to investigate an alternate suspect or a separate crime.

Otherwise, evidence that can be hugely helpful is off limits. In the Elizabeth Andes case, it also meant that any further investigation was verboten. But now that has all changed with Accused, and it is clear from the first two episodes that the investigation by Hunt and Rossmann has been thorough. But it’s not done yet. If you have any additional information about the case, email it to accused@enquirer.com

I asked Hunt for a brief plug for the podcast, and here was her response:

Some of these true crime examinations have been criticized after the fact for having an agenda or leaving key elements out. In this one, we went looking for anything that pointed to the suspect here being guilty, and everything we found is included in the reporting. It just turned out that there wasn’t much to share beyond a confession that came after 15 hours of interrogation. 

 

As for the halted investigation, I’m still trying to make sense of how the sealing of the arrest came to be interpreted to mean the murder case itself had to be closed. I’ve never seen that before, and neither has any lawyer I’ve talked to so far. 

-CM