Ashley Judd Explains Why She’s Trying to Block the Release of an Investigative Report on Naomi Judd’s Death

variety.com:

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic In a commentary published in the New York Times, Ashley Judd explains why she has filed a petition attempting to block the release of a report on the death of her mother, Naomi Judd — saying that “the horror” of the experience “will only worsen if the details surrounding her death are disclosed by the Tennessee law that generally allows police reports, including family interviews, from closed investigations to be made public.” In the essay, Judd reveals that her mother — who died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound at her home on April 30 — was still alive at the time police arrived, and contends that the barrage of questioning kept her from attending to her mother in some of her final moments.

Most relevant to her objection to the report, though, is that she says family members revealed many personal things in the heat of interrogation without any thought as to how those details would forever become part of the public record. “I felt cornered and powerless as law enforcement officers began questioning me while the last of my mother’s life was fading,” Judd writes. “I wanted to be comforting her, telling her how she was about to see her daddy and younger brother as she ‘went away home,’ as we say in Appalachia.

Instead, without it being indicated I had any choices about when, where and how to participate, I began a series of interviews that felt mandatory and imposed on me that drew me away from the precious end of my mother’s life.

And at a time when we ourselves were trying desperately to decode what might have prompted her to take her life on that day, we each shared everything we could think of about Mom, her mental illness and its agonizing history.” Judd