Opinion ID: 1452817
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: psychiatric report

Text: Shortly after the charges were filed in justice court, the appointed defense counsel presented ex parte motions to Judge Dore for a psychiatrist to be appointed and admitted to the jail to examine Baker. The motions were granted. The appointed psychiatrist, Dr. Johnson, examined the defendant and reported his findings to counsel for the accused. There was nothing in the order directing the psychiatrist to report to the court or to the prosecutor. At this point the charges were filed in the King County Superior Court and the case pre-assigned to Judge Agnew. After the accused entered a special plea of insanity, the state sought and obtained an order appointing another psychiatrist to examine Baker. On advice of counsel, Baker refused to talk to the second psychiatrist. Thereupon the state filed a motion in the superior court to require the first psychiatrist to report the results of his examination to the court and to the prosecutor. A hearing was set for this motion. Upon arrival in court to argue the motion, counsel for the accused discovered that the deputy prosecutor had already obtained possession of the report of the first-appointed psychiatrist. The report had been obtained by presenting an ex parte order to Judge Dore of Seattle District Justice Court, purporting to change the original order nunc pro tunc to direct Dr. Johnson to report to each party and to the court. The deputy prosecutor, armed with this order, then went to Dr. Johnson and obtained a copy of the report. Defense counsel came to the superior court hearing ready to argue the question of whether the prosecutor should have a copy of the report, but thereupon discovered that the legal processes for the resolution of this question had been short-circuited. [1] The question involved and now before this court is solely concerned with the procedure by which the deputy prosecutor (who did not argue this case on appeal) obtained the report. We specifically do not address the further question of whether the report should have been available if the motion in this respect actually had been pursued in superior court. In any event, it is relatively easy to resolve the question of whether the procedure used by the deputy prosecutor is defensible. If the order in question was validly issued, it is because of the authority granted by JCrR 8.03 which reads as follows: Rule 8.03 Clerical mistakes. Clerical mistakes in judgments, orders or other parts of the record and errors in the record arising from oversight or omission may be corrected by the court at any time and after such notice, if any, as the court may order. If an appeal has been taken, such mistakes may be so corrected until the record has been filed in the appellate court, and thereafter while the appeal is pending may be so corrected with the leave of the appellate court. The intent of the rule was clearly to provide a simple means of correcting clerical or administrative errors. It does not provide a means of changing a judgment in substance as by correcting an error of law contained therein.... Trautman, Vacation and Correction of Judgments, 35 Wash. L. Rev. 505, 506 (1960). The rule also implies that even clerical errors can be corrected only while the justice court retains jurisdiction over the case unless the other court involved gives leave to make such correction. Once the charges were filed in Superior Court, the justice court had no authority to issue such an order. Even without a hearing pending in superior court on the same question, the order was in error. Furthermore, surreptitious action by the deputy prosecutor ex parte and without notice to defense counsel raises serious questions of professional misconduct which might well merit attention of the Board of Governors of the Washington State Bar Association. However, in any event, the question with which we are confronted is the extent to which the actions of the deputy prosecutor and the alleged error in this regard may have prejudiced the rights of the defendant to a fair trial. [2] An error, considered in a vacuum, does not give rise to an automatic reversal of a judicial determination. There must be some nexus with a right of the defendant substantially abridged by the error. It is difficult to perceive that nexus in the instant case. The plea of insanity was withdrawn before trial; the question of insanity was not in any way an issue at the trial. The report by the psychiatrist is a part of the record and clearly was not usable to establish a defense of insanity. So, even in the absence of the action by the deputy prosecutor, there is not the slightest indication that Baker could have presented a successful insanity defense. As a means of restraining or regulating so-called police or prosecutional misconduct, there is an inherent inadequacy or weakness in the exclusionary rule originally enunciated in Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 383, 58 L.Ed. 652, 34 S.Ct. 341 (1913), and since reiterated in Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643, 6 L.Ed.2d 1081, 81 S.Ct. 1684 (1961), and in countless other cases. See Finley, Who is on Trial  The Police? The Courts? or the Criminally Accused? 57 J. Crim. L.C.&P.S. 379 (1966). Careful evaluation of the exclusionary rule suggests it is ineffective and of no practical utility in effecting a higher standard for police conduct in the specific criminal case. In other words, in a particular criminal case the exclusionary rule is like closing the barn door after the horse is out and gone. Furthermore, it is extremely dubious whether the exclusionary rule provides any effective continuing restraint or discouragement regarding tendencies toward misconduct by law enforcement people. Lastly, the rule goes too far in excluding crucial evidence  actually losing criminal cases for the state without any appreciable improvement in the standards for criminal law administration. The instant case presents another side of the coin. The exclusionary rule is totally ineffective in restraining or preventing official misconduct when there is no desire or attempt to introduce the tainted evidence at trial. Reliance upon the exclusionary rule tends to prevent the development of alternatives such as [j]udicial contempt citations for offensive law enforcement conduct and/or legislative imposition of penal sanctions for overzealous investigative activities, or provisions for recoupment of damages from the government for invasions of citizens' homes without warrant or probable cause ... 57 J. Crim. L.C.&P.S. at 386. Appellant suggests the use of another alternative  the dismissal of the information. To this end he cites State v. Cory, 62 Wn.2d 371, 382 P.2d 1019 (1963), wherein this court dismissed the information after finding that eavesdropping upon an attorney-client conference violated the right to counsel. [3] Dismissal of charges is an extraordinary remedy. It is available only when there has been prejudice to the rights of the accused which materially affected the rights of the accused to a fair trial and that prejudice cannot be remedied by granting a new trial. In State v. Cory, supra , we stated: There is no way to isolate the prejudice resulting from an eavesdropping activity, such as this. If the prosecution gained information which aided it in the preparation of its case, that information would be as available in the second trial as in the first. (Footnote omitted.) In Cory we assumed that the prosecutor had taken advantage of a simple means of obtaining evidence and knowledge of the defendant's trial strategy because there was no way of determining exactly what had been overheard. The basis for that assumption is not present in the instant case. The report of the psychiatrist is in evidence. This court is able to ascertain what, if any, prejudice resulted from the prosecutor's obtaining a copy of the report. As stated previously, prejudice cannot adhere when there is no nexus between official misconduct and a right of the accused. Appellant also asserts that the obtaining of the report was a violation of the physician-patient relationship and the attorney-client relationship. However, all of the cases cited involved situations where there was clear prejudice to a defendant at trial when the prosecution called the psychiatrist as a witness or otherwise used the questionable material at trial. There is nothing in the instant report which had any significant effect upon the trial itself. The report was not introduced at trial, the psychiatrist was not called as a witness, and there was no information about the crime contained in the report which was not already possessed by the prosecutor. Consequently, we see no reason whatever to order dismissal of the charges, and the assignment of error as to this aspect of the case is without merit.