The four sought court help precisely because, instead of accurately telling the public when inmates attempted suicide, Howard’s team hid behind misleading descriptions like "individual inmate disturbances" because that artful language would not require them to report the suicide attempts to the state Commission of Correction.

That deception was on top of falsely reporting that a hospitalized inmate was injured in a fall when, in fact, he had been beaten by a prisoner from whom he had sought protection. And it was in addition to not accurately reporting that another inmate died because jail deputies improperly tied a spit mask around his neck and he ended up strangled.

Against that backdrop of repeated cover-ups in inmate deaths, Justice Mark Montour concluded in 2018 that the four citizens had the right to compel Howard to accurately report serious jail incidents, and that they could seek to have him held in contempt if he did not.

The fact that they had to go to court to force accuracy and transparency from an elected official speaks volumes. Yet in a thin, five-paragraph decision that explains little, the judges have unanimously taken away that stick.