The Lake Erie Correctional Institution must pay a northeast Ohio inmate $2,000 in statutory damages for failing to release surveillance camera footage to him regarding two encounters with correctional officers, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today.

In a per curiam opinion, the Supreme Court also directed the prison to pay Devin Howard another $2,000 for withholding other public records. A majority of the Court found the privately run prison properly denied five of the nine public records requests Howard made. Because the prison failed to fulfill the other four within 10 business days of the complaint being filed in this case, the Court ordered the prison to pay Howard the maximum award of $1,000 per violation.

Howard sought a writ of mandamus from the Supreme Court to compel the release of the records on April 7, 2025, two days before House Bill 265 took effect. The bill amended the Ohio Public Records Act to bar inmates from recovering statutory damages in public records cases.

Justices Patrick F. Fischer, R. Patrick DeWine, Joseph T. Deters, Daniel R. Hawkins, and Megan E. Shanahan joined the per curiam opinion.

In an opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part, Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy agreed with the majority that the surveillance camera footage, a form, and emails were improperly withheld. She also maintained that the prison had to provide Howard with a prison case manager’s schedule and time logs, records showing which companies provide email and phone services to the prison, and a copy of a document containing definitions used in the prison’s policy for activation of body cameras and retention of camera recordings.

She would have awarded Howard $7,000 in damages. Justice Jennifer Brunner joined the chief justice’s opinion.

Video Records Denied for Security Reasons
Lake Erie Correctional is operated by CoreCivic under a contract with the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC). In August 2024, Howard became agitated with a correctional officer he knew only by his last name, Webster, after Webster ordered him to leave a dayroom area and return to his cell. Dayrooms are common areas at Lake Erie Correctional where inmates socialize, watch television, and prepare meals.

Later that day, Howard sent an electronic kite, a form of written correspondence between inmates and prison staff, to Laura Sackett. She is the prison’s designated public records coordinator.

Howard asked to view Webster’s body camera footage and the surveillance camera footage from the dayroom, which showed Howard’s interaction with Webster earlier that day. Howard specified he also wanted a copy of the bodycam video for a 10-minute period and the surveillance camera recording for a 15-minute period surrounding the incident.

Sackett responded eight days later, denying access to the surveillance camera footage. She said the records are exempt from disclosure under the Public Records Act because they are “security records” under R.C. 149.433(A)(1).  She also informed him that no bodycam footage was recorded during the 10-minute period Howard sought.

About two months later, in October 2024, Howard and another inmate were walking to the prison library when they were stopped by a corrections officer and told to return to the housing unit. Howard protested, saying he had a pass allowing him to go to his job assignment at the library. Howard maintains that the other inmate began to curse and argue with the officer. The officer summoned other officers to assist him.

Later that day, Howard sent a request to Sackett for a 10-minute segment from the bodycam footage of the three responding officers and surveillance footage from two cameras, one inside and one outside the housing unit.

Sackett responded about two weeks later, telling Howard no bodycam footage was saved during the time he requested and that the surveillance camera footage was exempt from disclosure as a security record.

Paper Record Requests Rejected
Along with the security video, Howard requested that Sackett provide him with several paper copies of records. His request included a paper copy of a “request for incoming funds” form, which authorizes the transfer of funds to an inmate’s account from another person. And he asked for all email correspondence between prison staff and ODRC regarding the implementation of an electronic filing system for court records in the prison.

Except for the email correspondence, Sackett denied Howard’s records requests for several reasons. In the provided emails, she redacted the work phone numbers and work email addresses of the employees who sent and received the emails. Howard objected to the redactions.

Prison Objects to Court-Ordered Record Release
Howard sought the writ to order the release of the records in April 2025, days before changes were made to the public records act, and then amended his complaint a month later. Lake Erie Correctional argued that since he amended his complaint, Howard had to follow the new version of the law.

The updates to the law included a new provision that once a public office denies a record request, the person seeking the records must send a form to the office asking it to “cure or otherwise” further address why the records were denied. The office then has three days to respond. Lake Erie Correctional argued that Howard did not provide a letter for any of his denied record requests, and under the new law, he could not seek a writ of mandamus to compel the release of the records.

Today’s opinion stated that Howard’s original request was made before the new law took effect. The date of the original lawsuit, not the amended complaint, determines which version of the law applies, the Court stated. The Court ruled that Howard did not have to send the notices before filing his lawsuit.

H.B. 265 updates to the law also restricted an inmate’s ability to collect statutory damages for record violations. The Court rejected the prison’s argument that when Howard amended his complaint, the new law was in effect, and he was not entitled to damages.

Supreme Court Analyzed Record Rejections
In an affidavit, Sackett noted that she informed Howard that the bodycam footage from the two incidents did not exist. While Howard argued the footage should have been retained under the prison policy in effect at the time he made the requests, the Court noted it could not order the prison to produce footage that no longer exists.

Unlike the bodycam footage, Sackett denied the surveillance camera footage on the basis that it was a security record and did not need to be turned over. She noted that the prison retains footage for 45 days, after which the cameras automatically overwrite the old footage.

While the recordings are no longer available, the Court ordered the prison to pay Howard damages for failure to release the surveillance camera video. R.C. 149.433(B)(1) defines a “security record” as any “record that contains information directly used for protecting or maintaining the security of a public office against attack, interference, or sabotage” or is “assembled, prepared, or maintained by a public office.”

The opinion explained that Howard’s request was similar to an inmate’s request in the Court’s 2018 State ex rel. Rogers v. Dept. of Rehab. & Corr. case, regarding access to security camera footage within a prison. In that case, the Court stated that a prison cannot just make a bare allegation that the footage is a security record, but instead it must explain how the video recording is actually used for “protecting and maintaining the security of a public office,” as the public records law requires.

The Court found Sackett’s evidence “no more compelling” than in Rogers. Sackett focused on how the safety and security of inmates and staff could be jeopardized generally by allowing a current inmate to review surveillance video.

“Sackett’s descriptions of how an inmate could make nefarious use of surveillance-camera footage are not enough to satisfy her burden of showing that the video was a security record,” the opinion stated. “And here, Sackett’s affidavit lacks any description of the prison’s ‘actual use’ of the surveillance footage at issue.”

Regarding the incoming funds document Howard requested, Sackett refused to provide a copy, noting to the Court that blank forms are available to inmates through other staff members and in the library. The Court stated that if the forms were available from other staff members, Sackett could have advised Howard of that. Since the form is a public record and Sackett denied Howard’s request, the Court directed her to provide Howard with the form and ordered the prison to pay $1,000.

With respect to the emails, Sackett told the Court that she redacted the phone numbers and email addresses because inmates have tried to use contact information to bypass proper administrative channels and harass staff. The Court noted that Sackett did not cite any law authorizing the redactions. The opinion stated that no law allows a public employee’s work cellphone number or work email address to be redacted from a public record.

Other Records Should Be Released, Separate Opinion Maintained
In her opinion, Chief Justice Kennedy noted that Howard was given several reasons for denying his request for a case manager’s schedule records; however, in response to his lawsuit, the prison relied solely on the security record exemption in R.C. 149.433(B).

Sackett’s affidavit stated that the scheduling records were security records because knowledge of staff’s presence and location at the prison could jeopardize the facility’s security and could increase the likelihood of “threats, harassment, violence, and insubordination” toward staff.

As the Court noted in rejecting the security record exemption for the surveillance camera footage, the exemption is based on the public office’s actual use of the records for security purposes. Chief Justice Kennedy wrote that Sackett’s claims are based “only on vague hypotheticals regarding what could happen if Howard misused the information.”

With respect to the records regarding the email and phone service providers, Sackett denied Howard’s request by stating that it was “too vague” and “overbroad.” The chief justice noted that Howard clarified his initial request to indicate that he was seeking agreements between the prison and its email and phone service providers, which the prison should have granted.

Lastly, Sackett refused to provide Howard with a copy of the definitions of terms in the prison body camera policy because he was requesting information rather than specific records.

“There is just one problem with that assessment: a document containing the definitions of the terms used in ODRC policies does, in fact, exist, but that record was not offered to Howard,” Chief Justice Kennedy wrote.

Sackett was under no obligation to go through the policy document and pull out individual definitions for Howard, the concurring and dissenting opinion noted. However, Howard asked for the “records containing the defined terms,” and that record existed and should have been provided to him, the chief justice concluded.

2025-0492. State ex rel. Howard v. Sackett, Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-3354.

Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Office of Public Information for the general public and news media. Opinion summaries are not prepared for every opinion, but only for noteworthy cases. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official headnotes or syllabi of court opinions. The full text of this and other court opinions are available online.