Opinion ID: 2377101
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: Preliminary Hearing Subpoenas and This Court's Protective Order

Text: As an April 7 and 8, 2008, setting for the preliminary hearing in this criminal prosecution approached, Kline issued another subpoena duces tecum to Judge Anderson. The subpoena required Judge Anderson to bring with him all KDHE reports produced in the Inquisition; 29 CHPP patient records produced in the Inquisition; a Cavanaugh affidavit for which no date was given; eight pieces of correspondence between Cavanaugh and CHPP lawyers from May, June, and August 2006; Judge Anderson's Memorandum Decision dated April 18, 2007; and one of his July 13, 2007 letters, presumably the one written to Kline and Morrison that dealt with CHPP's patient records. On March 24, 2008, also in preparation for the preliminary hearing, Kline issued a subpoena duces tecum to Dr. Elizabeth Saadi, KDHE's Interim Director for the Center for Health and Environmental Statistics. It called for her testimony and required her to bring to court certified copies of KDHE reports filed with the agency by CHPP regarding 23 of the 29 abortion patients whose records had been obtained from CHPP. KDHE filed an objection and motion to quash the subpoena 4 days later, arguing that it was prevented from producing the reports filed with it by CHPP because K.S.A. 65-445 forbade disclosure to the Johnson County District Attorney. On April 2, 2008, the eve of the hearing on KDHE's motion, Kline faxed two additional subpoenas to KDHE. Each was titled duces tecum but did not list any documents to be brought to the preliminary hearing by the witness. One was directed to KDHE's records custodian and one to KDHE Chief of Vital Statistics Data Analysis Gregory Crawford. The record before us contains an unsealed transcript of the April 3, 2008, hearing on KDHE's motion to quash before Judge Tatum. KDHE, Kline, and CHPP agreed at the hearing's outset that Judge Tatum and the parties also could take up the two later subpoenas faxed to KDHE as part of the motion hearing. Kline clarified that the two later subpoenas were intended to call for testimony only, despite their duces tecum labels. At the hearing, the lawyer for the KDHE said that no witness from the agency could authenticate the KDHE reports produced by the agency in the Inquisition as true and correct copies of the reports submitted to the agency by CHPP without doing a comparison of the two sets of documents. The agency was unwilling to do such a comparison unless ordered to do so because of the limitations of K.S.A. 65-445. For his part, Kline asserted during the hearing that he had no need for the documents listed in the Saadi subpoena because he already had them; rather, he only needed Saadi to authenticate his set as true and correct copies of the reports submitted to the agency by CHPP. Kline represented that the two later subpoenas to the KDHE records custodian and Crawford were intended to obtain testimony that KDHE complied with his request for documents in the Inquisition. Kline argued that nothing prevented him from sharing the KDHE reports he had gathered under K.S.A. 65-445 as Attorney General with other law enforcement agents or prosecutors, including himself as Johnson County District Attorney. He also argued that he could put the produced documents into evidence in this criminal prosecution through an investigator or Judge Anderson. Judge Tatum took the KDHE motion to quash under advisement. He also continued the preliminary hearing previously set for April 7 and 8 until May 27 and 28, 2008. Meanwhile, on the same day as the motion to quash hearing before Judge Tatum, Judge Anderson filed a Notice of Collateral Proceedings and Receipt of Subpoena for Records in Morrison v. Anderson, the case in this court seeking Judge Anderson's surrender of Inquisition documents. Judge Anderson attached a copy of the subpoena issued by Kline for the April 7 and 8 preliminary hearing. The same day, Six learned of the preliminary hearing subpoena and filed an emergency motion for protective order in Morrison v. Anderson. Six sought further court control of records but did not ask this court to stop Judge Anderson from testifying at the preliminary hearing in this criminal prosecution. On April 4, 2008, unaware of Judge Anderson's and Cavanaugh's January 2008 testimony in the hearing on the motion to disqualify CHPP counsel, and unaware that the January 7-8 preliminary hearing had been continued the previous day by Judge Tatum, this court issued a protective order in Morrison v. Anderson. We directed Judge Anderson to safeguard exclusive possession of inquisition records maintained by him and not to appear as a witness in this criminal prosecution until further order of this court. On April 18, 2008, after Judge Anderson had received our April 4 protective order in Morrison v. Anderson, he issued a similar protective order under the Inquisition case number so that Cavanaugh would not be forced to testify or produce documents for the preliminary hearing in this criminal prosecution. We have neither information in the record before us nor statements or arguments from counsel concerning how Judge Anderson had continuing jurisdiction in the Inquisition, which the Attorney General had purported to close the previous summer. Also on April 18, 2008, Judge Anderson gave written notice via letter to Kline of our April 4, 2008, protective order in Morrison v. Anderson. On April 21, 2008, Kline nevertheless issued a new subpoena duces tecum to Judge Anderson to appear and produce documents at the continued preliminary hearing in this criminal prosecution on May 27 and 28, 2008. The subpoena commanded Judge Anderson to bring with him (1) copies of any and all KDHE report forms regarding the Inquisition; (2) copies of the 29 patient records from CHPP; (3) a copy of his April 18, 2007, Memorandum Decision; and (4) a copy of one of his July 13, 2007, letters, again apparently the one of the two dealing with CHPP. Also on April 21, 2008, Kline filed in this criminal prosecution an unsealed and untimely Response to the KDHE motion to quash that had been heard on April 3; he did not serve the Response on the other parties, and there is no explanation on the record before us for this violation of Supreme Court and local court rules. Kline argued that K.S.A. 65-445 should not be construed to prevent him from getting the documents listed in the subpoena because the statute would then prevent exactly the enforcement of abortion regulation that the legislature intended to allow. He also asserted, apparently referring to Judge Anderson's and Cavanaugh's testimonies at the January 16 hearing on the State's motion to disqualify, that he had already demonstrated the relevance of the documents and the seriousness of the issue. The next day, April 22, 2008, Kline issued a subpoena duces tecum to Cavanaugh. It commanded that Cavanaugh bring with him to the continued preliminary hearing on May 27 and 28, 2008, (1) his September 10, 2007, affidavit; (2) a copy of Eye's letter to him dated August 14, 2006; (3) a copy of his letter to Eye dated August 15, 2006; and (4) a copy of Irigonegaray's letter to him, dated August 21, 2006. On April 24, 2008, Judge Tatum held another hearing in this criminal prosecution, this time on defendant CHPP's motions to strike, to have Kline held in contempt, and to dismiss. The motions were prompted by Kline's attachment of Judge Anderson's April 18, 2007, Memorandum Decision, which CHPP believed to be sealed in the Inquisition, to Kline's April 21 Response to KDHE's motion to quash, as well as the Kansas City newspaper's subsequent publication of information contained in the Memorandum Decision. Judge Tatum, had, during the April 3 hearing, declined Kline's invitation to review that Memorandum Decision and had placed the copy offered to him by Kline, unread, in a sealed envelope; Judge Tatum also had declined Kline's offer to contact Judge Anderson to check on the sealed or unsealed status of the Memorandum Decision. Judge Tatum denied CHPP's motions, instead reinforcing Judge Vano's seal order and directing the parties to deliver copies of anything to be filed in the clerk's office first to his chambers for review. On April 28, 2008, Judge Tatum issued a written order quashing the March 24 preliminary hearing subpoena duces tecum to Saadi. Although the parties had agreed to take up the two later KDHE subpoenas, i.e., those to the records custodian and Crawford, at the April 3 hearing on KDHE's motion to quash, Judge Tatum's order did not address either. A little over one week later, on May 2, 2008, this court unsealed portions of the record and court file in Comprehensive Health and Morrison v. Anderson. Also, believing that Judge Anderson had given Attorney General Six and his subordinates access to the entire Inquisition file by then, this court issued an Order to Show Cause why Morrison v. Anderson should not be dismissed. Our May 2 order also continued our April 4 protective order in force, save an amendment to permit Six to respond to discovery requests in the Tiller case. On May 8, 2008, KDHE filed a motion to clarify Judge Tatum's April 28 order in this criminal prosecution, seeking a ruling on whether the subpoenas to its records custodian and Crawford also had been quashed. On May 16, 2008, Judge Anderson filed a motion for protective order in this criminal prosecution on behalf of himself and Cavanaugh. Five days later, in this criminal prosecution, Kline filed a motion to reconsider and/or clarify Judge Tatum's order quashing Saadi's subpoena. He also filed a motion to intervene in Morrison v. Anderson in this court, arguing that his motion was timely because he had just become aware of the April 4 protective order when portions of the record in that case were unsealed. This statement was inconsistent with the date of Judge Anderson's letter to Kline. Kline's motion to intervene also inaccurately asserted that before May 7, 2008, he had not been previously noticed or made aware of the nature of any proceedings in Morrison v. Anderson. Kline had actually been served with a motion to consolidate Comprehensive Health and Morrison v. Anderson in September 2007. As support for intervention, Kline also included arguments on the merits of this criminal prosecution, invoking Judge Anderson's earlier expressed opinions and Cavanaugh's September 10, 2007, affidavit. Kline also argued that our April 4 protective order conflicted with our October 5, 2007, protective order entered in Comprehensive Health, which made an exception to dissemination of clinic patient records for the pursuit of a law enforcement investigation or court proceeding. Kline responded to Judge Anderson's motion for protective order in this criminal prosecution on May 27, 2008. He again based the bulk of his arguments on opinions Judge Anderson had expressed about the merits of the case against CHPP, as well as special counsel Cavanaugh's statements regarding missing viability determinations and reliance on CHPP counsel's description of the documents transmitted to Cavanaugh in late August 2006. As part of his effort to rely on Judge Anderson's expressions of opinion on the quality of Kline's evidence, Kline also mentioned that Judge Anderson had already testified at the January 16, 2008, motion to disqualify hearing and that Judge Anderson had shown the documents gathered by Kline to a Topeka police expert. Support for the Johnson County felony charges, Kline asserted, simply required a comparison of the original [KDHE reports] and the ... reports that criminal defendant claimed w[ere] kept `in a separate secure file' and ... were actual copies of the original report filed with KDHE. He further contended that the Johnson County misdemeanor charges were supported by the lack of viability determinations and emergency findings in the patient medical records produced by CHPP in the Inquisition. Also on May 27, 2008, Judge Tatum heard KDHE's motion to clarify, Kline's motion for reconsideration, and Judge Anderson's motion for protective order in this criminal prosecution. The transcript of this hearing is unsealed in the record before us. A Kline representative argued at the hearing that the subpoenas to the KDHE records custodian and Crawford were intended to bring witnesses to the preliminary hearing to testify generally about how KDHE reports are received and maintained and how the agency adds any markings to them. He said that the State also theoretically would have KDHE representatives compare the documents obtained from KDHE in the Inquisition and testify whether they are the same as the documents filed with KDHE by CHPP. Judge Tatum questioned whether KDHE personnel would be able to testify to that fact without having the originals of the reports in front of them and characterized a subpoena asking them to bring reports submitted by CHPP and KDHE for purposes of comparison as having a distinction without a difference from a subpoena asking them to bring such reports for admission into evidence. Counsel for Judge Anderson, and, by extension, Cavanaugh, relied on this court's April 4, 2008, protective order. In response, Kline argued that the April 4 protective order should not control because testifying posed no undue burden and impaired no privilege. In addition, Kline said, Judge Anderson had already testified in the January hearing on the motion to disqualify CHPP's counsel and Judge Anderson's testimony on the KDHE reports was necessary because of the opinions he had expressed on that evidence. Counsel for CHPP objected that Judge Anderson could not serve as an expert witness on his client's culpability, a position with which counsel for Judge Anderson agreed. Judge Tatum asked Kline to explain Judge Anderson's role in the prosecution's case against CHPP. Kline responded that Judge Anderson would not authenticate, necessarily. And he again, provoking repeated objections, recited Judge Anderson's previously expressed opinions on the quality of Kline's evidence. Finally, Judge Tatum heard the remainder of Kline's proffer on why Judge Anderson and Cavanaugh could provide relevant evidence in this criminal prosecution at the bench and on a sealed record not included in the transcript in the record on appeal. At the conclusion of the hearing, Judge Tatum ruled that this court's April 4 protective order in Morrison v. Anderson does not say that Judge Anderson is never to be a witness over here. It says he is not to appear ... until further order of the court.... .... [W]e have set the prelim hearing over. When we will get a ruling, a decision or when there's a further order of Supreme Court, I can't say. But we will wait for that. ... I will follow that order. At this time I will quash the subpoenas for Judge Anderson and Mr. Cavanaugh ... for the information requested and for their testimony as requested at this time. When we get further direction from the Supreme Court then we will proceed accordingly. On June 2, 2008, Judge Tatum signed an order quashing the subpoenas to the KDHE records custodian and Crawford. He also denied Kline's motion for reconsideration of his earlier decision on the Saadi subpoena. The next day, Six filed his Response opposing Kline's motion to intervene in this court's Morrison v. Anderson case. He pointed out several misstatements in Kline's motion, and argued that it was untimely. Six pointed out that his motion for protective order had not sought to prevent Judge Anderson's testimony in the preliminary hearing in this criminal prosecution, only to prevent further distribution of patient medical records by Kline. Six also argued that Kline's intervention motion was insufficient because of its failure to attach a pleading setting forth the claim or defense for which Kline sought to intervene. Judge Anderson endorsed Six' arguments against Kline's intervention through a Response filed June 6, 2008. Also on June 6, 2008, Kline filed his Notice of Interlocutory Appeal to the Court of Appeals in this criminal prosecution, challenging Judge Tatum's order suppressing evidence and enjoining any person from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment from testifying about any topic entered on May 27, 2008. This court denied Kline's motion to intervene in Morrison v. Anderson on July 3, 2008.