From Southerland v. Bragg, decided Friday by Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein (S.D.N.Y.):
The complaint in this case seeks to obtain judicial records (and possibly other records) relating to Jordan Neely, who as a child was a witness at the New Jersey trial that resulted in plaintiff's conviction for murder. Over a decade later, Neely was the victim in a prosecution brought in New York against Daniel Penny, which resulted in an acquittal. Under a New York State statute, Criminal Procedure Law § 160.50, that acquittal in turn resulted in the sealing of the records in the criminal case against Penny (and thus of any documents therein that relate to Neely). Plaintiff's complaint seeks to have this Court unseal the New York state court records in the Penny case to obtain any records relating to Neely….
Plaintiff has filed "motion to unseal" the records in the Penny case, to which defendants have responded. This Court of course has power to seal and unseal its own records in accordance with applicable legal standards. But in this motion to unseal, plaintiff is not asking the Court to unseal a document that was filed on the docket in the case before it.
Instead, the motion asks this Court to unseal the New York state court records in the Penny case: that is, plaintiff seeks the unsealing of the very records that he seeks to obtain through the filing of the complaint. Whether the Court has power to order production of those records will be decided in due course as part of its consideration of the merits of this case. In the meantime, there is no basis for the Court to unseal those same records in response to a "motion to unseal."
