Meyer’s texts raise open records question for Ohio State
https://apnews.com/82b40d7d1ab44cf09c2f84eefbbbeeb1
Any attempt by Ohio State coach Urban Meyer to eliminate work-related text messages on his university-issued phone to hide information would be illegal, open records experts said following a two-week investigation into his handling of domestic violence allegations against an assistant coach.
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As murky as the policy seems, Fred Gittes, a veteran open records lawyer in Columbus, said any elimination of texts on Meyer’s university-issued
phone related to his coaching responsibility would break Ohio’s open records law. He also noted that a lack of older text messages would make it difficult to determine whether NCAA recruiting rules were violated.
Open records advocate Dennis Hetzel questioned why investigators didn’t do more to track down any older messages.
“What happened to these text messages seems like a pretty big thing to ignore or not pay a lot of attention to,” said Hetzel, executive director of the Ohio News Media Association.
Tom Mars, an attorney who pried phone records out of the University of Mississippi in a lawsuit on behalf of former Rebels coach Houston Nutt in 2017, questioned why Ohio State couldn’t determine if Meyer deleted text messages from his university phone.
“If you can get possession of the phone, with the right software, the right forensic expert, you can retrieve everything the user thought was deleted,” Mars said.
He added: “I have a lot of respect for the people who oversaw that investigation, but I think they owe the public an explanation why they weren’t able to recover deleted text messages, assuming they made that effort.”