Judge orders LSU to give USA TODAY unredacted police report involving Derrius Guice
After a nearly five-month battle, an East Baton Rouge Parish District Court judge fined Louisiana State University and ordered the school to give USA TODAY an unredacted copy of a 2016 police report that names former star running back Derrius Guice.
LSU “was unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious in its refusal and delay and the redacted manner in which the documents were produced,” Judge Janice Clark wrote in her Dec. 29 ruling.
Clark further ordered LSU to pay $10,000 for USA TODAY’s attorney fees and an additional $6,200 in civil penalties — $100 for each of the 62 business days between the request date and the trial date, Nov. 23.
USA TODAY and Samantha Brennan, a former student who worked part-time in LSU’s football recruiting office, sued LSU in October after it refused to turn over a report that blacked out key details, including her and Guice's names. Brennan had reported Guice to campus police in July 2016, after she was told that Guice had taken a partially nude photograph of her without her knowledge and shared it with others on the football team.
“We're thrilled for the reporters, and especially for Samantha, the victim in this matter,” said Scott Sternberg, a New Orleans lawyer who represented USA TODAY in the case. “The public records law, and common sense, lean in favor of the public's right to know—and here the Judge agreed that LSU's excuses and redactions were wrong.
“By awarding fees, costs, and sanctions of $100 per day, the Judge added an exclamation point that we hope will resonate through this campus and others.”
LSU has appealed Clark’s ruling.
Brennan initially reported the allegations to two top athletic department administrators: her then-boss, football recruiting director Sharon Lewis, and Senior Associate Athletic Director Miriam Segar, who Brennan said encouraged her to file a police report and accompanied her to the police station to do so.
Federal and university Title IX policies required all employees who learned of sexual misconduct allegations to report them to the school’s Title IX coordinator, who must conduct an initial investigation. That did not happen in Brennan’s case — Brennan said that no one from the Title IX office ever reached out to her about an investigation or to offer support services.
After Brennan read USA TODAY’s August investigation about two students’ rape allegations against Guice that went uninvestigated by LSU, she contacted the reporters to say she, too, had an incident with Guice. On Aug. 19, Brennan called the LSU police department and requested a copy of her police report.
After several delays, LSU sent her a one-page, four-sentence “initial report.” It lacked numerous details, including Guice’s name and her claim that he’d shared the photo with others, which is a felony under Louisiana law.
When Brennan asked for the rest of the file, two LSU officials told her she could not have it because the statute of limitations in the case had not expired.
USA TODAY had previously asked LSU for copies of all campus police reports involving Guice. In response, LSU provided reports for two non-criminal incidents involving him, but did not provide Brennan’s report nor mention its existence.
USA TODAY and Brennan sued LSU for access to the full report in October.
“I am overjoyed by Judge Clark's ruling,” Brennan told USA TODAY. “This has never been about me. As I testified in court, I want my unredacted police report to give credibility to all of the victims out there that are being accused of not reporting and using this as a payday. We did report, and I, specifically, did report to the most official department.
“LSU cannot keep covering up their actions, and clearly Judge Clark agreed.”
On Nov. 16, USA TODAY published an investigation, featuring accounts from Brennan and other students’, showing how the university’s athletic department and broader administration repeatedly have ignored complaints against abusers, denied victims’ requests for protections and subjected them to further harm by known perpetrators.
The same day, LSU announced it was hiring an outside law firm, Husch Blackwell, to investigate its handling of the allegations mentioned in USA TODAY’s reporting, as well as a sample of more than 50 others from 2016 to 2018.
Two days later, and after months of stonewalling, LSU turned over the remaining pages of the police report to Brennan and USA TODAY. But the university continued to shield the names of everyone in the report except the officers.
In the November trial, attorneys for LSU argued that because no arrests were made, those involved in the incident – including Guice – have a right to privacy under the state constitution. LSU even objected to Sternberg mentioning Guice by name during the hearing.
“I hope LSU will stop trying to give victims run arounds when they try to obtain their own records,” Brennan told USA TODAY. “LSU gave me obstacle after obstacle to try to keep me from my police report, but they did not prevail.
“This is a win for all of the victims out there that have not received the justice they deserve.”