In re: Jonathan Luna
Case Number: 2020-01310
Court: Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas
Client: LNP Media Group, Inc.
Background: In 2003, the body of Jonathan Luna, an assistant U.S. Attorney from Baltimore, was found in a stream in rural Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. For more than 20 years after this discovery, questions have lingered about whether Luna’s death was a homicide or a suicide. But the answers that might be found in Luna’s autopsy report remain shielded from the public.
In 2020, the Lancaster County District Attorney’s office sought and obtained a sealing order preventing the public from accessing a copy of the autopsy. LNP Media Group, Inc., publisher of LNP | LancasterOnline, then moved to intervene and unseal the record. The Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas ultimately ruled in 2021 that a balancing of competing interests weighed in favor of continuing to maintain the seal on Luna’s autopsy record.
Now, however, with the passage of yet more years of unanswered questions, and even more public scrutiny, LNP argues in a renewed motion to unseal that the time has come to empower the public and allow it to determine, for itself, what those autopsy records reveal. Represented by Paula Knudsen Burke, the Reporters Committee’s Local Legal Initiative attorney for Pennsylvania, LNP argues that the court should dissolve the sealing order and let the public learn what law enforcement officials have long known, and at times conflicted over, regarding Luna’s death.
From the Filing: “In its efforts to responsibly report on a matter of public concern, LNP is simply trying to obtain the crucial documents — in this instance, Mr. Luna’s autopsy records — that may assist in providing answers to questions surrounding Mr. Luna’s death, and, in so doing, holding to account local, state, and federal officials whose clandestine handling of this matter undermines the public’s trust and understanding of its government.”
Related: In November 2024, the Lancaster County Court of Common Pleas issued a ruling in favor of LNP and one of its reporters, ordering county officials to release the names of two children whose deaths had been reported by the coroner. Burke has been representing the newspaper in the public records case since early 2024.
And in July 2023, the Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania ordered Allegheny County to provide journalist Brittany Hailer, represented by Burke, with autopsy records concerning a 63-year-old man who died in custody, holding that autopsy and toxicology reports are publicly accessible under Pennsylvania’s Coroner’s Act.
Filings:
2024-11-27: Renewed motion of LNP Media Group, Inc. to unseal coroner records
2024-11-27: Brief in support of renewed motion of LNP Media Group, Inc. to unseal coroner records