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WASHINGTON POST Even after a 15-year legal fight against racial profiling, Maryland NAACP leaders say they still need to see Maryland State Police internal investigations of black motorists' complaints, amid concerns that the practice continues. "Of course racial profiling is going on," said Gerald Stansbury, president of the NAACP's Maryland State Conference. "There is a sense of that, yes." His remarks came as the state's second-highest court heard arguments Tuesday in the NAACP and American Civil Liberties Union's effort to see the 9,500 pages of documents in the internal state police investigations into complaints of racial profiling. The latest phase in the legal battle springs from the fact that none of the 100 complaints filed over five years was upheld in State Police internal investigations. The NAACP says it needs access to the documents to determine whether State Police are following policies agreed to in a 2003 federal settlement. "The state could simply be throwing every single complaint into the trash can, and nobody would know," said Seth Rosenthal, an attorney for the NAACP. The state contends that the documents are personnel records detailing individual troopers' actions. That would exempt them from public scrutiny under state law, Assistant Attorney General David R. Moore argued before the Court of Special Appeals. "This balance has been legislatively determined, and this court ought not to reweigh it," he said. Moore also contended that the NAACP and ACLU are using state courts to do an end-run around the federal court, which refused them access to the files. The stakes were highlighted by Tuesday's hourlong hearing. The full Court of Special Appeals was called together to hear the arguments -- something that happens about once a year -- though three of the 13 judges did not attend. "Important decisions that are often controversial" are often heard by the full court, said C. Christopher Brown, a lawyer in Baltimore who has studied the state's appellate courts. Byron Warnken, a University of Baltimore law professor, said the action means the court is likely to issue a decision that can be cited as precedent for other cases. Most of its decisions are unreported, meaning they carry no weight beyond the cases they resolve.
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