Iowa Code – 2004 §22.7 – Confidential records – consisted of 47 subsections within six pages articulating which documents produced by the State of Iowa were restricted from the public.
In 2011, Damian Echols, Jason Baldwin, and Jessie Misskelley entered into an Alford Plea deal with the State of Arkansas, allowing them to maintain their innocence while being forced to communicate the State of Arkansas had enough evidence to convict them to secure equal access to their freedoms, rights, and liberties.
The collection of evidence and the investigative journey that corrected this injustice was fueled by the people’s ability to access law enforcement records and witness the truth in several documentaries, the (at the time) newly adopted World Wide Web, and later social media.
For 18 years, the public analyzed and organized evidence leading to a case that led to the establishment of the accepted understanding (including members of the victim’s families) that the State of Arkansas and the local community produced enormous amounts of evidence of religiously based discrimination and other failures within its justice system leading to these three citizens viewed as outcasts by their peers losing many years of their lives that evidence indicates all of us take for granted.
In 2011 (the same year the West Memphis Three were released from prison), the Iowa Legislature passed Acts, ch106, §16, 17, repealing Iowa Code Section 22.6 while protecting Iowa government officials from criminal prosecution upon the presentation of evidence showing their failure to provide access to requested public records documenting the truth of their government body’s historical conduct.
In June 2023, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds settled three lawsuits accusing her of violating Iowa’s public records law. “The state of Iowa agreed Wednesday to pay more than $174,000 in attorney fees to settle three lawsuits against Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds that accused her of failing to follow the state’s public records law.”
As of 2024, Iowa Code – 2024 §22.7 – Confidential records – has grown to 75 subsections and a length of 9 pages.
All the Alford plea, evidence of public records concealment, and the evidence supporting the Iowa Public Information Board’s misrepresentation of facts and criminalization of an innocent citizen during 2023 while seeking expanded political power and authority provide are evidence supporting a reasonable conclusion that the elite and those elected or appointed to positions of power lack the honor, courage, and commitment to face the pain in their own life that they have inflicted on the lives of others through the manifestation of a properly balanced and ethical justice system. The elite and those having political influence can manipulate and distort the official record, but when citizens such as this look into the eyes of the honorable in their soul, they know where they truly stand when not concealed by extravagant thread counts that they deploy to conceal their true form.
