The leader of the group investigating the deadliest massacre on an American college campus believes that despite state and federal privacy laws, his group eventually will receive sensitive medical information about the gunman.
“We will get what we need to take this panel where it needs to go,” Virginia Tech Review Panel Chairman Gerald Massengill said. “It may be difficult and there are challenges none of us expected, but we will get there.”
The former Virginia state police superintendent and other panelists grew increasingly frustrated Monday as the state’s mental health inspector repeatedly said he was legally prohibited from answering their questions about Seung-Hui Cho during Monday’s meeting at George Mason University.
James Stewart said he could not tell the panel details such as whether Cho attended the court-ordered treatment session he was scheduled for 16 months before fatally shooting 32 students and faculty on Virginia Tech’s campus.
“It’s really rather remarkable we’re talking about a deceased individual responsible for all kinds of carnage and we are still encumbered by law,” said panelist Tom Ridge, a former Pennsylvania governor and the United States’ first homeland security secretary.
Massengill said the panel is working with two volunteer lawyers from the high-powered Skadden Arps law firm to legally obtain Cho’s medical history and other private information on the 23-year-old from Centreville who ended his shooting by committing suicide. The panel could possibly obtain information in “summary form” instead of viewing his entire medical history, Massengill said, or it could use the State Crime Commission’s broad subpoena power to compel the records’ release.
The privacy laws infuriated the families of Cho’s victims. They could not fathom why a dead person who police consider solely responsible for the incident would receive legal protection.
“My son’s privacy was breached on April 16, and the privacy of others was destroyed,” said Andrew Goddard, whose son, Colin, survived after suffering four gunshot wounds inside a classroom. “I find it incredibly disturbing and distasteful that an individual who brutally violated the privacy of so many should have his privacy so doggedly preserved even though he is now deceased.”
