DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE v. LANDANO

Legal Principle at Issue

Whether the government is entitled to a presumption that all sources supplying information to the FBI during a criminal investigation are "confidential sources" under Exemption 7(D) of the Freedom of Information Act.

Action

Vacated and remanded. Petitioning party did not receive a favorable disposition.

Facts/Syllabus

Vincent James Landano was convicted in New Jersey state court for murdering a police officer during what may have been a gang-related robbery. In an effort to support his claim in subsequent state-court proceedings that the prosecution violated Brady v. Maryland (1963) by withholding material exculpatory evidence, Landano filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the Federal Bureau of Investigation for information it had compiled in connection with the murder investigation. 

When the FBI redacted some documents and withheld others, Landano filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey, seeking disclosure of the entire contents of the requested files. The FBI claimed that it withheld the information under Exemption 7(D), which exempts agency records compiled for law enforcement purposes by law enforcement authorities in the course of a criminal investigation if the records' release "could reasonably be expected to disclose" the identity of, or information provided by, a "confidential source." 

The district court held that the FBI had to articulate case-specific reasons for nondisclosure of information given by anyone other than a regular informant, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed in relevant part, holding that a source is confidential if there has been an explicit assurance of confidentiality or circumstances from which such an assurance could reasonably be inferred. However, the Third Circuit rejected the government's argument that a presumption of confidentiality arises whenever any individual or institutional source supplies information to the FBI during a criminal investigation and declined to rule that a presumption may be based on the particular investigation's subject matter. Rather, the Third Circuit held that, to justify withholding under Exemption 7(D), the government had to provide detailed explanations relating to each alleged confidential source.