Kowal v. DOJ (D.C. Cir) -- affirming district court’s 2022 decisions—following multiple rounds of summary judgment—that: (1) the FBI, DEA, and ATF justified the adequacy of their searches for records concerning plaintiff’s client, Daniel Troya, who was sentenced to death for murder in 2009; and (2)(a) defendant agencies properly withheld third-party information pursuant to Exemption 7(C); (b) FBI properly relied on Exemption 3 in conjunction with 18 U.S.C. §§ 2510–12, to withhold a narrative summary of a wiretap conversation; (c) FBI and DEA properly withheld source information pursuant to Exemption 7(D), noting that “grisly nature” of the crime “easily” supported inference of confidentiality for each source.
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