A Case That Reached the Internet Before the Court
- Justice for Laura volunteer
- Dec 16, 2025
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 19, 2025
There are moments in a criminal case when the central concern is no longer the allegation itself, but the integrity of the process by which the prosecution is unfolding. State of Arizona v. Laura Michelle Owens has reached that point.
The issue presented here is one of procedure and constitutional fairness: whether a criminal prosecution can be said to comply with due process when a sealed superseding indictment enters public circulation through online channels before the court authorizes its release.
The concerns did not arise suddenly. They accumulated.
On November 11, 2025, Justice for Clayton–aligned content creator Omar Serrato livestreamed himself scrolling through and reading from what he presented as a superseding indictment against Laura Owens. He displayed the document itself and treated it as the operative charging instrument.
The document shown during that livestream was not file-stamped and continues to appear on the “Victims of Laura Owens” website. It did not contain a “True Bill” certification from the grand jury foreperson. Most critically, it did not contain a criminal case number. Instead, it bore only a grand jury identifier.
That distinction is significant. Public access to criminal filings depends on the existence of a criminal case number. Without one, there is no public docket to search, no eAccess entry to retrieve, and no lawful mechanism by which a member of the public can obtain or verify the document through court records.
At the time of the November 11 livestream, the superseding indictment was not accessible on the Maricopa County Superior Court docket—sealed or otherwise. Because it had not yet been unsealed and had not been attached to a publicly accessible criminal case, there was no docket “container” through which it could be obtained. Even the defendant would not have been able to locate it independently through court records at that stage.
According to a user posting on the Justice for Clayton subreddit, the superseding indictment was not unsealed until December 2, 2025—more than three weeks later. That same day, online discussion reflected that the indictment had finally become available through lawful court channels, underscoring how closely this case is being monitored once the court opens the record.
The sequence matters.
Before a criminal case number is assigned and a sealing order is lifted, an indictment exists only within non-public systems: grand jury materials, prosecutorial charging files, law-enforcement coordination channels, or clerk intake queues. By design, there is no lawful public pathway to obtain such a document at that stage. This structure exists to protect due process by ensuring that charges are introduced through the court, in a neutral manner, and at a time chosen by the judiciary rather than by private actors.
Yet here, the indictment entered public discourse before any of those safeguards were in place.
This does not require an assumption of intentional misconduct. There are several plausible explanations for how a document could escape custody without deliberate wrongdoing. Large prosecutor’s offices involve multiple layers of access—attorneys, investigators, law-enforcement partners, analysts, and support staff. Drafts and finalized charging instruments may circulate internally for review, coordination, or logistical preparation. A failure of protocol, an informal share, or a misunderstanding of sealing obligations can be enough to allow a document to leave controlled channels.
But the source of the disclosure, while important, is not the threshold constitutional issue. The issue is custody and control.
Due process requires that the court, not outside actors, control when and how criminal charges become public. When a sealed indictment reaches the public first through advocacy media rather than through a court order, the defendant is denied the protection of a neutral starting point. The case begins not in the courtroom, but in public commentary, before the defense can respond through lawful channels and before the court has exercised its gatekeeping role.
That harm is not cured simply because the indictment is later unsealed. Due process violations turn on timing, notice, and fairness—not on whether the same information eventually becomes public. Once the sequence is broken, the prejudice cannot be undone retroactively.
Three days after the November 11 livestream, on November 14, Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell held a press conference in which she discussed how unusually “popular” this case has become online. She described checking her social-media notifications, joked about the volume of attention, and acknowledged—almost jokingly—that this investigation generates more online engagement than anything else she sees.
In the context of an active criminal prosecution, however, they raised a more serious concern: a case unfolding with open awareness of—and apparent comfort with—an online audience. Prosecutors are not meant to be entertained by public fervor. They are expected to be insulated from it. When public fascination becomes part of the atmosphere rather than a risk to be managed, the boundaries that protect due process begin to erode.
Taken together, the sequence raises a serious constitutional question: whether the State can credibly maintain that this prosecution unfolded within the procedural guardrails required by due process, when a sealed superseding indictment was publicly displayed before it was lawfully accessible through the court.
This is not an argument about guilt or innocence. It is an argument about whether the defendant was afforded the basic due-process protections guaranteed at the outset of a criminal case: fair notice, court-controlled disclosure, and a proceeding free from premature public adjudication.
Accordingly, the State must account for how the superseding indictment—lacking a file stamp, lacking a criminal case number, and lacking judicial authorization for release—was obtained by third parties and publicly read on November 11, 2025, and why that same version continues to appear on the “Victims of Laura Owens” website.
At minimum, the State should be required to answer the following:
How did a non-party obtain a copy of the superseding indictment before it was unsealed by court order?
From which custodial channel did the document originate, including prosecutorial files, law-enforcement coordination materials, clerk intake processes, or grand-jury-related records?
Who had authorized access to the indictment during the sealed period, and what safeguards were in place to prevent dissemination?
Was any version of the indictment shared outside the County Attorney’s Office prior to unsealing, and if so, with whom and for what purpose?
Why did the version publicly circulated lack a file stamp, True Bill certification, and criminal case number, confirming it was not a publicly released court filing?
If the State can provide a clear, credible explanation establishing that custody was maintained and that due process was preserved despite this sequence, the court may then assess whether the violation is curable. But if the State cannot answer these questions—or if the answers confirm that a sealed charging instrument left non-public custody and entered the hands of an openly hostile advocacy group during a protected period—then the constitutional harm is complete.
In that circumstance, dismissal is not discretionary. A criminal prosecution cannot proceed where its initiating document entered public discourse through partisan channels before judicial release and outside court control. Allowing the case to continue would not remedy the violation; it would ratify it.
Due process does not require proof of intent, nor does it require the defendant to identify the source of the breach. The obligation to safeguard sealed charging instruments rests entirely with the State. When that obligation fails, and when the failure cannot be explained or cured, dismissal is the only remedy that preserves the court’s authority and the integrity of the criminal process.
This article relies on publicly accessible filings, testimony, and reporting. It aims to summarize and contextualize the existing record but does not purport to speak for any party involved in the litigation. All interpretations are based on documents already in the public domain.
