Opinion ID: 489555
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Claim of Privilege

Text: 12 The defendant claims that Reverend Ciociola's testimony should have been excluded under what he labels a believer-clergyman privilege, and the government denies that what it calls the priest-penitent privilege was applicable to the particular conversations between Reverend Ciociola and the defendant. To use the term priest as the government does, although a common practice, see, e.g., Trammel v. United States, 445 U.S. 40, 45, 51, 100 S.Ct. 906, 909, 912, 63 L.Ed.2d 186 (1980), might suggest application only to a particular religion not involved in this case; we will therefore refer to it simply as the clergy-penitent privilege. 9 13 Referring to another type of claimed privilege, Learned Hand, in McMann v. SEC, 87 F.2d 377, 378, cert. denied, 301 U.S. 684, 57 S.Ct. 785, 81 L.Ed. 1342 (1937) commented that, [t]he suppression of truth is a grievous necessity at best. Because testimonial privileges contravene the fundamental principle that the public has a right to every person's evidence, privileges must be strictly construed so as to be applied only to the very limited extent that excluding relevant evidence has a public good transcending the normally predominant principle of utilizing all rational means for ascertaining truth. Trammel, 445 U.S. at 50, 100 S.Ct. at 912 (citing Elkins v. United States, 364 U.S. 206, 234, 80 S.Ct. 1437, 1454, 4 L.Ed.2d 1669 (1960) (Frankfurter, J., dissenting)). The Court in Trammel explained in dicta that the clergy-penitent privilege is limited to private communications rooted in confidence and trust. The privilege recognizes the human need to disclose to a spiritual counselor, in total and absolute confidence, what are believed to be flawed acts or thoughts and to receive priestly consolation and guidance in return. 445 U.S. at 51, 100 S.Ct. at 913. If, however, one seeks out the clergy only for income tax avoidance, we see no more need for a protective privilege than if the taxpayer had consulted his butcher or barber. The taxpayer is not a penitent seeking spiritual relief from his sins, only a citizen seeking relief from his obligation to pay taxes. 14 In 1980, in the same month that Dube applied to join the Community Church of Truth, he and his wife also joined the Christian Assembly of God Church where Ciociola was pastor. Before he became a member, the defendant told Ciociola that he, Dube, was tax exempt because he was a minister. Ciociola merely responded with Oh. Ciociola testified to three or four more tax conversations with the defendant over the next two-and-a-half years which generally occurred in a public restaurant. Ciociola testified that the defendant mentioned on [one] occasion that the vow of poverty entailed one's ability to take all his resources and use them for the church. In using those resources for the church, you were thereby tax-exempt because you could do things with that money that normally you couldn't do. Ciociola, in their conversations, explained to the defendant that the teaching he had received about taxes was that pastors of even small struggling churches had to pay income taxes on wages they received from the church, as well as on income from any additional outside employment. Ciociola checked further with the legal counsel for his church who reaffirmed the tax opinion which Ciociola had explained to Dube. Ciociola passed this correct income tax information to the defendant. Dube, Ciociola believed, was relying on the tax information Dube had received with his mail-order credentials when he joined the Life Science Church and the Basic Bible Church. Ciociola advised the defendant that he should seek tax advice outside those churches because of the complications that had arisen with the IRS. 15 Ciociola in his testimony revealed nothing from any conversations he may have had with the defendant which related in any way to defendant's spiritual confidences. Ciociola's testimony related only to Dube's efforts to relieve himself from the necessity of paying income taxes. The mere fact that Ciociola was a legitimate pastor did not cast a privilege around all or whatever Ciociola and Dube happened to talk about. In this case, their conversations were only about the defendant's efforts to avoid paying his taxes. This was a subject that the defendant continually argued with United Airlines, the IRS, the leaders of his various mail-order churches, and even with a United States Senator and a Congressman. There was nothing confidential about Dube's tax views. 16 The defendant's other arguments can be quickly dismissed. Dube argues that Ciociola never knew that a clergy-penitent privilege existed, and that the government therefore was able to take advantage of Ciociola, causing Ciociola to violate the privilege. This argument is groundless as there was nothing in Dube and Ciociola's tax conversations which the privilege could protect. Defendant argues that he and Ciociola also discussed intimate moral and spiritual matters. We do not know whether that is true or not because Ciociola was not asked to testify as to anything of that nature. The defendant also argues that Ciociola's testimony was erroneously admitted to show the willfulness of defendant's tax maneuvers. There was evidence enough of willfulness without any of Ciociola's testimony, but, in any event, the tax debates between Ciociola and the defendant do not amount to disclosure to a spiritual counselor in absolute confidence about what are believed to be flawed acts or thoughts for the purpose of receiving the benefit of priestly consolation and guidance in return. Trammel, 445 U.S. at 51, 100 S.Ct. at 913. 17 The defendant persistently sought someone to tell him he was tax exempt, but he could find no one who would do so except his mail-order churches, a number of whose leaders and members also went to the penitentiary. If by merely joining one of the tax churches a person could avoid all taxes and yet have the full use of his earned income, there would likely be an overnight overabundance of mail-order bishops. That sudden proliferation of bishops, however, would hardly indicate a great religious revival in this country.