Federal prison officials are fighting to prevent disturbing videos of teen inmate Ashley Smith duct-taped and forcibly tranquilized from being shown at a coroner’s court hearing next week in Toronto.

The Correctional Service of Canada filed a motion that would keep the videos and other documents from public view until it is decided whether the coroner has the power to call witnesses or hear evidence from outside of Ontario.

If the jury won’t be granted access to the material, the public should never see it, prison officials argue.

It’s about the “proper administration of justice,” said Joel Robichaud, a lawyer for the prison service.

“It’s a coverup,” said Julian Falconer, a lawyer who represents the Smith family. “They are fighting the release of the materials because it would render their position publicly ridiculous.”

Smith, 19, died five years ago this week inside a solitary confinement cell at the federal Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener, Ont. She had tied a piece of cloth around her neck and turned purple while guards watched. It’s not known whether her death was accidental.

In the 10 months preceding her death, she had been transferred 17 times between institutions across the country. She spent most of that time in segregation. Her self-harm attempts escalated and she routinely tied ligatures around her neck. Prison staff was instructed to ignore her until it was clear that she had stopped breathing.

A video from a Quebec prison shows her being forcibly injected with tranquilizers and left to lie in a wet gown on a metal gurney for hours without food or water.

Smith had been in custody since she was 15, when a judge sentenced her to a few months in jail for throwing crab apples at a postman and stealing a CD. Her sentence swelled to more than six years because of in-custody charges. She was transferred to federal prison when she turned 18, nearly a year before her death.

This is the second inquest into her death. The first was derailed by intense legal wrangling and the surprise retirement of the presiding coroner, who thought the inquest should be limited to Smith’s time in Ontario.

The new coroner, Dr. John Carlisle, disagrees.

Carlisle said the jury must consider Smith’s prolonged segregation in several facilities across the country in determining how she died. He wants three out-of-province prison doctors who treated Smith to testify at the inquest.

“It seems clear that the circumstances of the death give rise to the need for recommendations which might assist the system to avoid such a deaths in future,” Carlisle wrote in a Sept. 20 statement on the inquest’s scope.

In May last year, an Ontario court ruled the events shown in the out-of-province videos likely had affected Smith’s state of mind and were relevant to the inquest.

Falconer said the new Correctional Service motion shows it is “an institution out of control.”

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Correctional Service commissioner Don Head was not available for comment. A spokeswoman said the prison service is “not only committed to openness and transparency, but the integrity of these proceedings.”

The coroner will hear arguments about the inquest’s scope and jurisdiction Oct. 23.