These files are public

It's encouraging that the office of state Attorney General Roy Cooper seems to be eager to flush out any wrongdoing that may have clouded DWI prosecutions in Johnston County. But when that eagerness leads to a sealing of public records, something is out of whack.

The AG's people were so determined to prevent a reporter from The N&O from seeing files involving DWI cases that it arranged for a judge from Fayetteville to issue a last-minute order putting them off limits. The rationale: an SBI investigation would be jeopardized if the files were made public.

That ignores two pertinent points. First, North Carolina law doesn't provide for such an embargo. It says that public records should remain accessible even when they figure in a criminal investigation. Second, when a responsible news organization exercises its right to inspect records, that doesn't necessarily mean it intends to rush into print with everything it learns. No such news organization would want to publish something that obviously would frustrate the pursuit of justice.

In fact, newspaper reporting has helped bring attention to suspicious patterns in how DWIs were being handled in Johnston. The district attorney's office was dismissing a high percentage of such cases -- in 2006, 43 percent, vs. a statewide level of 14 percent. By the first half of this year, the dismissal rate had dropped below 20 percent.

If something fishy has been going on, the public counts on authorities to uncover it. But they should do so while complying with the law that guarantees public access to public records, specifically those records that involve the workings of the criminal justice system.