HELENA — The Montana Supreme Court has ordered a lower court to hear from media outlets and advocacy groups regarding public access to documents in the high-profile murder case of Michael Paul Brown.
A five-member panel ruled in favor of six news outlets and media advocates on Tuesday. The media groups, who are the petitioners, are seeking public access to documents in the case against Brown, who is charged with shooting and killing four people in Anaconda last summer.
According to the Montana Free Press, District Court Judge Jeffrey Dahood sealed all case documents and proceedings in August before allowing the petitioners to object. When the media groups asked to intervene in the case in January, Dahood rejected the request. He said the media did not show they had standing to enter the case.
The six petitioners in the lawsuit are the Montana Newspaper Association, the Montana Free Press, the Montana Broadcasters Association, Lee Enterprises (which owns five Montana newspapers), States Newsroom (which owns the Daily Montanan) and the Montana FOI Coalition. MTN News is a member of the Montana Broadcasters' Association.
The news outlets then asked the state Supreme Court to review the decision. Chief Justice Cory Swanson signed Tuesday's ruling, with the high court stating Dahood fundamentally misunderstood the law. The district court must now allow the media to argue for public access to the court records.
Brown was charged with four counts of deliberate homicide in the shooting deaths of David Leach, 70, Daniel Baillie, 59, Tony Palm, 74, and Nancy Kelley, 64, on the morning of Aug. 1, 2025, at the Owl Bar in Anaconda.
According to charging documents, he then fled the scene in a stolen pickup truck, leading law enforcement on a week-long manhunt in the mountainous, wooded area west of town. Brown was arrested on Friday, Aug. 8, just west of Anaconda.
In December 2025, he was ordered to be placed in the custody of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services after he was deemed mentally unfit to proceed to trial.
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