Georgia Supreme Court Holds Autopsy Photographs Are Confidential Under the Open Records Act

Are autopsy records public? In Georgia, the answer for autopsy photographs is now clearer than ever. On May 6, 2025, the Supreme Court of Georgia unanimously ruled that autopsy photographs held by the government are shielded from disclosure under the state Open Records Act, and that the statute's narrow escape hatches are not easy to pry open.

The case is Wallace v. The State, reported at 321 Ga. 505 and 915 S.E.2d 625, Docket S25A0416. Presiding Justice Warren wrote for a unanimous Court.

Information last verified on June 20, 2026.

What the Case Was About

Antonio Wallace was convicted of felony murder in 2011 and has a pending habeas corpus case. To support that petition, he retained Dr. Jan Gorniak, the former Chief Medical Examiner of Fulton County, to review the victim's autopsy. According to the opinion, Dr. Gorniak asked to see the original autopsy photographs because the copies provided in discovery were blurry and in black and white.

Wallace's counsel then filed a request under the Open Records Act asking the District Attorney's office to send the original autopsy photographs to Dr. Gorniak. The office declined, citing OCGA 45-16-27(d). When Wallace moved for disclosure in the superior court, the trial court denied it, and the Supreme Court affirmed.

A key fact shaped the outcome. The victim died in a hospital in Florida, and the autopsy was performed there by a Florida-licensed medical examiner. The victim's sister testified that the family opposed releasing the photographs.

The Statute: Autopsy Photographs Are Exempt

The Open Records Act sets a general rule of openness. As the Court noted, OCGA 50-18-71(a) provides that all public records shall be open for inspection and copying, except those that by court order or by law are specifically exempted from disclosure.

Autopsy photographs are one such exemption. Quoting the statute, the Court explained that OCGA 45-16-27(d) provides a specific exemption from disclosure for autopsy photographs: "Autopsy photographs shall not be subject to disclosure pursuant to [the Open Records Act]."

That default is strong, but it is not absolute. The same subsection carves out two paths to release. First, the exemption does not apply to disclosure of such photographs to physicians for medical purposes. Second, the statute allows a superior court to order disclosure in closed criminal investigations upon written findings that disclosure is in the public interest and that it outweighs any privacy interest that may be asserted by the deceased's next of kin. Wallace argued he fit both. The Court disagreed on each.

For readers comparing how access works across the country, our overview of death records laws across the United States explains how each state treats death certificates, autopsy reports, and the cause-of-death entry differently.

Why the "Medical Purposes" Exception Did Not Apply

Wallace argued that sending the photos to Dr. Gorniak, a physician, satisfied the medical-purposes exception on its face. The Court read the exception more narrowly. The purpose of Wallace's request was to build a legal claim, specifically to support an ineffective-assistance-of-counsel argument in his habeas case, not to obtain medical care or a medical service for the deceased.

In the Court's view, hiring a physician as a litigation expert does not convert a legal purpose into a medical one. Reading the exception the way Wallace proposed would have let any litigant route an autopsy-photo request through a retained doctor and thereby defeat the confidentiality rule. The Court declined to open that door.

Why the "Public Interest" Exception Did Not Apply

The public-interest exception requires a superior court to make written findings that disclosure is in the public interest and outweighs the next of kin's privacy interest. Two facts sank Wallace's argument here.

First, the victim's family opposed disclosure, which placed a concrete privacy interest on the other side of the scale. Second, Wallace's main public-interest theory rested on a Georgia statute governing who may perform an autopsy, but that statute did not apply because the autopsy took place in Florida, not Georgia. With his central argument removed, the Court found he had not shown a public interest that outweighed the family's objection.

The Court's conclusion was direct. Because the autopsy photographs were not subject to disclosure under the Open Records Act, and the request was not for medical purposes and did not meet the requirements to be in the public interest under OCGA 45-16-27(d), the District Attorney was not required to disclose them. The judgment was affirmed, with all seven justices concurring.

The Concurrence: A Due Process Warning

Chief Justice Peterson agreed with the result but wrote separately to flag a concern for future cases. He noted that the confidentiality statute could collide with a defendant's rights if courts apply it too rigidly.

In his words, OCGA 45-16-27(d) raises serious due process concerns if applied restrictively and, in the proper case, those concerns would require disclosure of autopsy photos under the public interest exception. The point is that the public-interest balancing test must leave room to weigh a prisoner's legitimate need for evidence, not just the family's privacy. Because Wallace had not properly framed that argument, the issue was left for another day. The concurrence signals that the confidentiality rule, while strong, is not immune from constitutional limits.

How This Compares to Other States

Georgia is not unusual in treating autopsy imagery as especially sensitive. The victim in this case died in Florida, which is notable because Florida pioneered strict autopsy-confidentiality rules after the death of NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt. Under Fla. Stat. 406.135, a photograph or video or audio recording of an autopsy held by a medical examiner is confidential and exempt from the state's public-records law, releasable to the public only by court order upon a showing of good cause.

State approaches to death records more broadly vary widely, and the autopsy photo is often the most protected piece. Ohio, for instance, treats the death certificate as a public record while restricting the medical cause-of-death portion, as detailed in our guide to Ohio death records. Utah is more restrictive about who may obtain a death certificate at all and treats recent records as confidential for a set period, which we cover in our guide to Utah death records. Reading those two against the Georgia ruling shows that the answer to "can I get this record" depends heavily on the state, the specific document, and who is asking.

Analysis: Why This Matters

The following analysis reflects the views of the Recording Law Editorial Team.

The lasting value of Wallace is not the headline that autopsy photos are confidential. That much was already in the statute. The lasting value is the Court's tight reading of the two exceptions, which makes the confidentiality rule far more durable in practice. By holding that a litigation-driven request routed through a retained physician is a legal purpose rather than a medical one, the Court closed a workaround that could otherwise have swallowed the exemption.

The family-privacy thumb on the scale is the other quiet but important move. By treating an objection from the next of kin as a real and weighty interest, the Court signaled that grieving families are not bystanders in these disputes. That is a humane instinct, but it also raises the bar for journalists, researchers, and even defendants who have legitimate reasons to examine how a death was investigated.

The Peterson concurrence is where the next fight lives. A blanket confidentiality rule that lets the State use autopsy evidence to defend a conviction while denying a prisoner access to the same evidence to challenge it would sit uneasily with due process. The Chief Justice all but invited a future litigant to present that argument cleanly. How Georgia courts handle that case will determine whether the public-interest exception has real teeth or is mostly theoretical.

None of this is legal advice. Whether a particular record is releasable, and under which exception, is a fact-specific question that turns on the statute, the court, and the requester's purpose. Anyone seeking or contesting access to autopsy records should consult a licensed attorney in the relevant state.