Loughner Lawyers Claim Mug Shot Is Inherently Private
Lawyers for Jared Lee Loughner are asking a judge to block release of a second mug shot of the Tucson shooting suspect.
The Pima County Sheriff’s Office released a mug shot of a smiling Loughner two days after his arrest in the shooting rampage that killed a federal judge and five others. Now his lawyers are trying to stop release of a second booking photo taken by the U.S. Marshals Service, according to Bloomberg News, the Arizona Republic, and the Associated Press.
An emergency motion filed by defense lawyers on Thursday cites privacy concerns. “Mug shots are powerfully associated with criminality,” the motion says. “Furthermore, and apart from the implications of criminality, the nature of information captured by mug shots [is] inherently private. Specifically, mug shots reveal what individuals look like at their most humiliated moments, information which is, by nature, highly private.”
