Opinion ID: 693398
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Counseling Privilege

Text: 23 Officer Redmond requests that we vacate the jury's verdict on the ground that the district court's instructions improperly stated to the jurors that they were permitted to draw an adverse inference from the defendants' failure to disclose information protected by the psychotherapist/patient privilege. The trial court's instruction explicitly allowed the jury to infer that Officer Redmond revealed unfavorable and damaging information to her therapist during her many counseling sessions; the judge told the jury that it was entitled to presume that the contents of the notes would be unfavorable to Mary Lu Redmond and the Village of Hoffman Estates. Initially, we note that the existence and scope of evidentiary privileges are to be governed by the principles of the common law as they may be interpreted by the courts of the United States in the light of reason and experience. Fed.R.Evid. 501. 13 The Supreme Court has observed that Rule 501 manifested an affirmative intention not to freeze the law of privilege but that its purpose was to  'provide the courts with the flexibility to develop rules of privilege on a case-by-case basis.'  Trammel v. United States, 445 U.S. 40, 47, 100 S.Ct. 906, 911, 63 L.Ed.2d 186 (1980) (citations omitted). 24 This is a case of first impression before the Seventh Circuit, questioning the existence of a federal privilege for confidential communications between a licensed clinical social worker and a patient. The Second and Sixth Circuits have determined that reason and experience compel the recognition of the psychotherapist/patient privilege in both civil and criminal cases. In re Doe, 964 F.2d 1325 (2d Cir.1992); In re Zuniga, 714 F.2d 632 (6th Cir.), cert. denied, 464 U.S. 983, 104 S.Ct. 426, 78 L.Ed.2d 361 (1983). In contrast, the Fifth, Ninth, Tenth, and Eleventh Circuits have rejected the privilege in factual situations not even remotely similar to the one before this court, each interpreting Rule 501 as limiting the development of privileges to those recognized by the common law. See United States v. Burtrum, 17 F.3d 1299 (10th Cir.1994) (declining to recognize a psychotherapist/patient privilege in criminal child sexual abuse case); In re Grand Jury Proceedings, 867 F.2d 562 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 493 U.S. 906, 110 S.Ct. 265, 107 L.Ed.2d 214 (1989) (rejecting assertion of a psychotherapist/patient privilege by target of grand jury murder investigation); United States v. Corona, 849 F.2d 562 (11th Cir.1988), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1084, 109 S.Ct. 1542, 103 L.Ed.2d 846 (1989) (refusing to recognize a psychotherapist/patient privilege in criminal firearms case); United States v. Meagher, 531 F.2d 752 (5th Cir.), cert. denied, 429 U.S. 853, 97 S.Ct. 146, 50 L.Ed.2d 128 (1976) (rejecting criminal defendant's assertion of psychiatrist/patient privilege in bank robbery trial). With the exception of the Tenth Circuit's decision in Burtrum, which involved admissions by a pedophile to his therapist of criminal child sexual assault, 14 the decisions refusing to recognize the psychotherapist/patient privilege are at least five years old. Much has changed with the mental health field in the past five years. 15 The need, and demand, for counseling services has skyrocketed during the past several years due to the rapid spread of violence and crime throughout our nation. Countless innocent bystanders, as well as law enforcement officers themselves, witness violent crimes and homicides. 16 These unfortunate individuals, who include not only law enforcement personnel, but also students, school and hospital employees, postal workers, and members of the general public, need and deserve the help, support, and emotional release provided by confidential counseling. The recognition of a psychotherapist/patient privilege can only serve to encourage troubled individuals, as well as those who witness, participate in, and are intimately affected by acts of violence in today's stressful, crime ridden, homicidal environment, to seek the necessary professional counseling and to assist mental health professionals to succeed in their endeavors. 25 We agree with the Second and Sixth Circuits that reason and experience compel the recognition of a psychotherapist/patient privilege. Reason tells us that psychotherapists and patients share a unique relationship, in which the patient's ability to communicate freely without the fear of public disclosure is the key to successful treatment. See In re Zuniga, 714 F.2d at 640 ([t]he essential element of the psychotherapist-patient privilege is its assurance to the patient that his innermost thoughts may be revealed [to his therapist] without fear of disclosure  in order that the patient might receive adequate treatment) (emphasis added). 26 The psychiatric patient ... exposes to the therapist not only what his words directly express; he lays bare his entire self, his dreams, his fantasies, his sins, and his shame. Most patients who undergo psychotherapy know that this is what will be expected of them, and that they cannot get help except on that condition.... It would be too much to expect them to do so if they knew that all they say--and all that the psychiatrist learns from what they say--may be revealed to the whole world from a witness stand. 27 In re Zuniga, 714 F.2d at 638 (quoting Taylor v. United States, 222 F.2d 398, 401 (D.C.Cir.1955) (quoting Guttmacher and Weihofen, Psychiatry and the Law 272 (1952))). Moreover, communications with a psychotherapist often involve highly personal matters, the disclosure of which would frequently be embarrassing to the point of mortification for the patient. In re Doe, 964 F.2d at 1328. Indeed, courts and commentators have focused on an individual's right of privacy, a fundamental tenet of the American legal tradition, to justify the psychotherapist/patient privilege. See, e.g., Developments in the Law: Part IV, 98 Harv.L.Rev. at 1544-47 ([c]ompelled disclosure of information communicated by a patient to a psychotherapist will therefore often threaten the privacy of the patient's most intimate thoughts); In re Lifschutz, 2 Cal.3d 415, 431-32, 85 Cal.Rptr. 829, 839, 467 P.2d 557, 567 (1970) (quoting Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479, 484, 85 S.Ct. 1678, 1681, 14 L.Ed.2d 510 (1965)) (We believe that a patient's interest in keeping such confidential revelations from public purview, in retaining this substantial privacy, has deeper roots than the [state] statute and draws sustenance from our constitutional heritage.... [T]he United States Supreme Court declared that 'Various guarantees [of the Bill of Rights] create zones of privacy,' and we believe that the confidentiality of the psychotherapeutic session falls within one such zone). 28 Privacy serves several functions: it allows room for personal autonomy, it permits necessary emotional release, and it promotes free self-evaluation. The privacy rationale, however, regards the privacy of individuals as important not only in fostering these ends, but also as an end in itself. Compelled disclosure is considered inherently wrong because it inflicts two distinct kinds of harm: (1) the embarrassment of having secrets revealed to the public, and (2) the forced breach of an entrusted confidence. 29 Developments in the Law--Privileged Communication: Part II. Modes of Analysis, 98 Harv.L.Rev. 1471, 1481 (1985) (citations omitted). 30 We are cognizant of the fact that all fifty states have recognized the need for and have adopted varying forms of the psychotherapist-patient privilege. 17 See Developments in the Law: Part IV, 98 Harv.L.Rev. at 1539 (the psychotherapist-patient privilege has won consistent approval from courts and commentators). Although federal common law governs our recognition of privilege in this case, see In re Pebsworth, 705 F.2d 261, 262 (7th Cir.1983), the law of privilege as developed by the states is not irrelevant as the Supreme Court has taken note of state privilege laws in determining whether to retain them in the federal system. United States v. Gillock, 445 U.S. 360, 369 n. 8, 100 S.Ct. 1185, 1191 n. 8, 63 L.Ed.2d 454 (1980); see also Memorial Hospital v. Shadur, 664 F.2d 1058, 1061 (7th Cir.1981) (quoting United States v. King, 73 F.R.D. 103, 105 (E.D.N.Y.1976)) ( '[a] strong policy of comity between state and federal sovereignties impels federal courts to recognize state privileges where this can be accomplished at no substantial cost to federal substantive and procedural policy ' ) (emphasis added); William T. Thompson Co. v. General Nutrition Corp., 671 F.2d 100, 104 (3d Cir.1982) (federal courts are not precluded from resort[ing] to state law analogies for the development of a federal common law of privileges in instances where the federal rule is unsettled). The widespread recognition of the psychotherapist/patient privilege in all fifty states is strong evidence that experience with [the privilege] has been favorable. In re Doe, 964 F.2d at 1328 (emphasis added). 31 Particularly significant to the case before the court is the Illinois Mental Health and Development Disabilities Confidentiality Act, 740 ILCS 110/1-110/17 (1994), which expressly recognizes a psychotherapist/patient privilege: 32 [I]n any civil, criminal, administrative, or legislative proceeding, or in any proceeding preliminary thereto, a recipient, and a therapist on behalf and in the interest of a recipient, has the privilege to refuse to disclose and to prevent the disclosure of the recipient's record or communications. 33 Id. at 110/10 (emphasis added). The term therapist, as defined by the statute, includes any psychiatrist, physician, psychologist, social worker, or nurse providing mental health or development disabilities services.... Id. at 110/2 (emphasis added). Illinois law thus explicitly extends the privilege to communications with a licensed clinical social worker, like Karen Beyer. 34 For these reasons, we recognize the existence of a psychotherapist/patient privilege under Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence. 18 However, we also note that the privilege we recognize in a case of this nature requires an assessment of whether, in the interests of justice, the evidentiary need for the disclosure of the contents of a patient's counseling sessions outweighs that patient's privacy interests. In re Doe, 964 F.2d at 1328; see Trammel, 445 U.S. at 52, 100 S.Ct. at 913 (the question is whether the privilege ... promotes sufficiently important interests to outweigh the need for probative evidence in the administration of ... justice); cf. Fed.R.Evid. 403 (evidence may be excluded if its probative value is substantially outweighed by the danger of unfair prejudice, confusion of the issues, or misleading the jury, or by considerations of undue delay, waste of time, or needless presentation of cumulative evidence); Developments in the Law: Part IV, 98 Harv.L.Rev. at 1544-47 (Because the privilege impedes the judicial truth-seeking function, courts and legislatures have generally limited the privilege to cases in which its application would be consistent with its underlying purposes of facilitating medical diagnosis and treatment). We acknowledge that [e]videntiary privileges in litigation are not favored. Herbert v. Lando, 441 U.S. 153, 175, 99 S.Ct. 1635, 1648, 60 L.Ed.2d 115 (1979). Whatever their origins, these exceptions to the demand for every man's evidence are not lightly created nor expansively construed for they are in derogation of the search for the truth. United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 710, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 3108, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974). Accordingly, we will determine the appropriate scope of the privilege by balancing the interests protected by shielding the evidence sought with those advanced by disclosure. In re Zuniga, 714 F.2d at 640. 35 We decline to speculate as to what situations would call for the abrogation of this privilege. Instead, we confine our analysis to a factual situation of this nature, where the balance of the competing interests tips sharply in favor of the privilege if we hope to encourage law enforcement officers who are frequently forced to experience traumatic events by the very nature of their work to seek qualified professional help. The plaintiffs sought disclosure of the confidential communications between Officer Redmond and Karen Beyer, a licensed clinical social worker. 19 There were numerous eyewitnesses to the shooting, including Officer Redmond and several of Allen's brothers and sisters, four of whom testified at trial. Officer Redmond testified at trial as to her recollection of the circumstances leading up to the incident. Thus, the plaintiffs' need for Officer Redmond's personal innermost thoughts about the shooting incident were cumulative at best. In contrast, Officer Redmond's privacy interests were, and are still, substantial. Officer Redmond sought professional counseling after an unquestionably traumatic and tragic event she experienced in the line of duty. Her ability, through counseling, to work out the pain and anguish undoubtedly caused by Allen's death in all probability depended to a great deal upon her trust and confidence in her counselor Karen Beyer. Officer Redmond, and all those placed in her most unfortunate circumstances, are entitled to be protected in their desire to seek counseling after mortally wounding another human being in the line of duty. An individual who is troubled as the result of her participation in a violent and tragic event, such as this, displays a most commendable respect for human life and is a person well-suited to protect and to serve. Based on the facts and circumstances presented in this record, we recognize the existence of the psychotherapist/patient privilege in this Circuit and thus the confidential communications between Mary Lu Redmond and her licensed clinical social worker Karen Beyer are protected from compelled disclosure.