Court Opinion

ID: 9773672
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 17:53:27.182651+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:31:54.470760
License: Public Domain

SEILER, Judge,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. I never thought I would see the day when this court would say that a client by pleading a legitimate defense — insanity—would thereby waive the attorney-client privilege and make available to the prosecution his confidential communications to his lawyer. By sheer judicial fiat, contrary to our statute, § 491.-060(3) RSMo 1978, and contrary to what the vast majority of other courts have held and with no judicial support whatever other than a single poorly reasoned New York decision, the court is saying to defendants: Beware the insanity defense, because if used, whatever you or your lawyer say to each other is fair game for the prosecution and must be revealed. This is incredible, yet here it is. “[A] defendant who pleads insanity waives all other privileges, including the attorney-client privilege”, says the principal opinion. In affirming this conviction, the principal opinion writes bad law.
The principal opinion states only a few of the facts. To understand what is involved here, the reader should be aware of the following: On May 25,1976, defendant, for no apparent reason, killed the victim, Billy Joe Kralicek, in the Jasper County jail by beating the victim about the head and shoulders with a heavy metal mop wringer. Both defendant and the victim were inmates of the jail. Defendant was in the jail because of having called the sheriff’s department and his parole officer around 3:00 a.m., asking to be taken into protective custody because he believed he was the victim of a communist conspiracy. The deputies put defendant in the holding tank.
Without taking space here to go into great detail as to defendant’s strange conduct on the days in question, defendant explained to his parole officer that he was a federal undercover narcotics agent investigating a communist conspiracy, that he was under control of a communist brain transmitter and that he had taken some street drugs and had made a trip to Kansas City. On these grounds, the parole officer had him arrested for violation of parole. This resulted in defendant’s being moved from the holding cell to a dormitory cell which housed other prisoners, including the victim. Later in the day he tried to place a telephone call to God and then about 9:00 p.m., without provocation, started beating the victim Kralicek with the mop wringer, yelling that Kralicek was the devil and needed to be killed. Defendant is a relatively small man, but efforts by the jailers and other inmates (about six were in the same cell) failed to subdue him. He was finally stopped with tear gas. After the attack defendant stated the victim was a “dynamite and gun runner for the conspiracy” and further that he recognized the turnkey as another member of the conspiracy.
Prior to May 25, the date of the killing, defendant had been behaving irrationally. These episodes included chopping up his car, which he had recently purchased, with an axe; spending an entire night with his girlfriend at nearby chat piles praying in order to conceive a child; quitting his job because his employer was part of the communist conspiracy; and believing that someone had contaminated the water supply to his trailer with drugs. Defendant, particularly since January 1976, had a history of drug abuse, especially in use of amphetamines. In his discussion with his parole officer on the morning of the killing, he said that he had had three Quaaludes, and then had taken three “bird eggs” (apparently an amphetamine) to counteract the effect of the Quaa-*62ludes. Also, he related that he had been slipped 750 mg. of LSD in an ice cream cone one or two days before coming to jail. However, he denied he was under the influence of drugs at that time. Furthermore, testimony by experts and non-experts was that amphetamines would not produce the symptoms exhibited by defendant.
Based on these facts, defendant’s court-appointed attorney considered a defense of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. His theory was that defendant was suffering from a toxic psychosis. “A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if as a result of mental disease or defect he did not know or appreciate the nature, quality or wrongfulness of his conduct or was incapable of conforming his conduct to the requirements of law.” § 552.030.1, RSMo 1969. Furthermore, evidence of such mental disease or defect is admissible “[t]o prove that the defendant did or did not have a state of mind which is an element of the offense ... .” § 552.030.3(1), RSMo 1969. “The terms ‘mental disease or defect’ do not include alcoholism without psychosis or drug abuse without psychosis .... ” § 552.010, RSMo 1969.
Defendant, prior to trial, underwent two mental examinations at Fulton State Hospital. He was also examined by a defense retained psychiatrist, Dr. Turfboer, who concluded that defendant suffered from a toxic psychosis excluding criminal responsibility. Defense attorney hired a second psychiatrist, Dr. Roy Wilson of the Smith-Glynn-Callaway Clinic in Springfield, to get, a second opinion. Defendant’s mother paid for this examination. Contrary to defense counsel’s expectations, Dr. Wilson concluded that defendant was not suffering from a mental disease or defect that would exclude responsibility. Thus, counsel decided not to call Dr. Wilson as a defense witness. This was an entirely proper decision for defense counsel to make, and as pointed out later herein, had this been a civil case, the opposite side could not have used Dr. Wilson as a witness or obtained a copy of his report.
After Dr. Wilson refused to furnish the state with a copy of his report prior to trial, the state moved on February 28,1980, for a court order to compel disclosure by defendant of Dr. Wilson’s report. The defense filed suggestions in opposition and a motion to suppress Dr. Wilson’s testimony. After hearing, the trial court sustained the state’s motion for an order to disclose and overruled defendant’s motion to suppress. Pursuant to court order, defendant disclosed Dr. Wilson’s report to the state. Also, the state called as a rebuttal witness Dr. Wilson, who testified, over objection, as to his opinion of defendant’s mental condition.
On appeal defendant claims that the trial court erred in ordering disclosure of Dr. Wilson’s report and in allowing Dr. Wilson to testify for the state in rebuttal. This action, it is claimed, is erroneous because this action violated the attorney-client privilege, the physician-patient privilege, the defendant’s fifth amendment rights, and the defendant’s sixth amendment right to effective assistance of counsel.
We should hold, along with the vast majority of the jurisdictions that have decided the question,1 that the report of a psychiatrist who is hired and paid for by the defendant and who is not to be called as a witness for the defense is not subject to disclosure and such a psychiatrist may not be called as a witness by the state. We should find persuasive, and the principal opinion makes no effort to come to grips with, the reasoning of the courts which have based the decision on the communications to the psychiatrist as being within the compass of and as an adjunct to the attor*63ney-client privilege. This is not a broadening of the privilege, as contended by the principal opinion, but is a recognition of the fact, in a situation which has not yet been presented to the Missouri courts, that to be effective, the privilege must extend to the consultations which the attorney arranges with an expert witness in an effort to determine whether the defense of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect is available, something the attorney cannot know without an examination for that purpose, not for treatment. Under the principal opinion the attorney must stick his (and his client’s) head into a noose in order to ascertain this vital information.
In United States v. Kovel, 296 F.2d 918 (2d Cir.1961), the issue was whether communications to an accountant are protected by the attorney-client privilege. Analogizing the situation to the need for an interpreter when the client speaks a foreign language, Judge Friendly stated that in a complicated tax case “the presence of the accountant is necessary, or at least highly useful, for the effective consultation between the client and lawyer which the privilege is designed to permit.” Id. at 922. “What is vital to the privilege is that the communication [to the accountant] be made in confidence for the purpose of obtaining legal advice from the lawyer.” Id. (Friendly, J.) (emphasis in original).
Thereafter, in a similar situation involving, as here, psychiatric testimony, in United States v. Alvarez, 519 F.2d 1036 (3d Cir.1975), the court stated:
We see no distinction between the need of defense counsel for expert assistance in accounting matters and the same need in matters of psychiatry. The effective assistance of counsel with respect to the preparation of an insanity defense demands recognition that a defendant be as free to communicate with a psychiatric expert as with the attorney he is assisting. If the expert is later used as a witness on behalf of the defendant, obviously the cloak of privilege ends. But when, as here, the defendant does not call the expert the same privilege applies with respect to communications from the defendant as applies to such communications to the attorney himself.
Id. at 1046.
In Pouncy v. State, 353 So.2d 640 (Fla.App.1977), the court stated the issue as follows:
Whether the doctrine of attorney-client privilege bars the State from deposing and calling as witnesses psychiatrists hired by an accused or his counsel for the sole purpose of aiding the accused and his counsel in the preparation of his defense, i.e. insanity.
Id. at 641 (emphasis in original). Pouncy, although cited by the principal opinion, is a strong case in favor of defendant’s position. In Pouncy the Florida court ruled that the attorney-client privilege barred the state from deposing and calling as witnesses psychiatrists hired by the defense for the sole purpose of aiding counsel in the preparation of his defense of insanity, which is the same situation we have in the present case. The Florida court quoted the following persuasive reasoning from United States v. Alvarez, 519 F.2d 1036 (3d Cir.1975):
“[T]he effective assistance of counsel with respect to the preparation of an insanity defense demands recognition that a defendant be as free to communicate with a psychiatric expert as with the attorney he is assisting. If the expert is later used as a witness on behalf of the defendant, obviously the cloak of the privilege ends. But when, as here, the defendant does not call the expert the same privilege applies with respect to communications from the defendant as applies to such communications to the attorney himself.
* * * * * *
... The issue here is whether a defense counsel on a case involving a potential defense of insanity must run the risk that a psychiatric expert whom he hires to advise him with respect to the defendant’s mental condition may be forced to be an involuntary government witness. The effect of such a rule would, we think, have the inevitable effect- of depriving *64defendants of the effective assistance of counsel in such cases. A psychiatrist will of necessity make inquiry about the facts surrounding the alleged crime, just as the attorney will. Disclosures made to the attorney cannot be used to furnish proof in the government’s case. Disclosures made to the attorney’s expert should be equally unavailable, at least until he is placed on the witness stand. The attorney must be free to make an informed judgment with respect to the best course of the defense without the inhibition of creating a potential government witness.”
The same situation was presented in State v. Pratt, 284 Md. 516, 398 A.2d 421 (1979), with an identical holding. There the court held that it was error to permit a defense employed psychiatrist to testify for the state because it violated the attorney-client privilege. In discussing its rationale for so holding the court stated:
Initially we. observe that, given the complexities of modern existence, few if any lawyers could, as a practical matter, represent the interest of their clients without a variety of nonlegal assistance. Recognizing this limitation, it is now almost universally accepted in this country that the scope of the attorney-client privilege, at least in criminal causes, embraces those agents whose services are required by the attorney in order that he may properly prepare his client’s case. Consequently, in line with the views of the vast majority of the courts in our sister jurisdictions, we have no hesitancy in concluding that in criminal causes communications made by a defendant to an expert in order to equip that expert with the necessary information to provide the defendant’s attorney with the tools to aid him in giving his client proper legal advice are within the scope of the attorney-client privilege.... This is uniquely so in cases concerning the question of a criminal defendant’s sanity, because the need of an attorney to consult with a qualified medical expert is paramount. Such a medical expert not only provides testimony that usually is necessary at trial to support an insanity defense, but also “attunes the lay attorney to unfamiliar but central medical concepts and enables him, as an initial matter, to assess the soundness and advisability of offering the defense ... and perhaps most importantly, ... permits a lawyer inexpert in the science of psychiatry to probe intelligently the foundations of adverse testimony.” United States v. Taylor, 437 F.2d 371, 377 n. 9 (4th Cir.1971).
Id. at 423-24.
Section 491.060(3), RSMo 1978, declares the common law rule; it neither limits nor diminishes the attorney-client privilege. State ex rel. Great American Insurance Co. v. Smith, 574 S.W.2d 379, 382 (Mo. banc 1978). Until the present case, Missouri courts have adopted a broad interpretation of the attorney-client privilege. For example, this court in State ex rel. Cain v. Barker, 540 S.W.2d 50 (Mo. banc 1976), even held that statements made by the client to a third party, an insurance adjuster, were within the attorney-client privilege and thus not discoverable. It is anomalous to have a more restrictive interpretation of the privilege in the criminal context where it is closely linked to the sixth amendment right to effective assistance of counsel.
Another anomaly is that the question presented in the instant case would not arise under the civil rules because there is no provision for discovery of experts retained but not to be called. Rule 56.-01(b)(4)(a) provides for discovering through interrogation the identity of experts to be called and Rule 56.01(b)(4)(b) provides for discovering “by deposition the facts and opinions to which the expert is expected to testify”, but not of an expert who is not to testify. On what basis is it fair or consistent with getting at the true facts to withhold the testimony or evidence of a psychiatrist who examines as an expert witness, but who is not to be called as a witness at trial in a civil case, while permitting just the opposite in a criminal case? We should hold that the defendant does not waive the attorney-client privilege unless the defense retained psychiatrist is to be a defense witness, as we do in civil cases.
*65The principal opinion is naive and not being realistic when it says that Dr. Wilson was not acting as a member of defense counsel’s investigative staff when examining to see whether the insanity defense was possible. Any sensible defense counsel would want to know about that — and without having to pay the price of furnishing a powerful witness for the opposition if the doctor’s opinion is not helpful to the defense. The principal opinion says this is only of minor importance.
But there is respected authority to the contrary, not met or discussed by the principal opinion, pointing out the chilling effect such a rule would have and its effect on a defendant’s right to effective assistance of counsel.
[A] defense counsel in a case involving a potential defense of insanity must run the risk that a psychiatric expert whom he hires to advise him with respect to the defendant’s mental condition may be forced to be an involuntary government witness. The effect of such a rule would, we think, have the inevitable effect of depriving defendants of the effective assistance of counsel in such cases.... The attorney must be free to make an informed decision with respect to the best course for the defense without the inhibition of creating a potential government witness.
United States v. Alvarez, supra, 519 F.2d at 1046-47 (3d Cir.1975) (emphasis added).
The Pratt court stated the potential effects as follows:
Breaching the attorney-client privilege in this situation also would have the effect of inhibiting the free exercise of a defense attorney’s informed judgment by confronting him with the likelihood that, in taking a step obviously crucial to his client’s defense, he is creating a potential government witness who theretofore did not exist.... The possible impact upon the federal and State constitutional rights of the defendant of a rule permitting such testimony further persuades us that we should be reluctant to hold there is a waiver, under the circumstances here, of the attorney-client privilege.
State v. Pratt, supra, 398 A.2d at 426.
Nor does the principal opinion consider the resulting prejudice to the defendant. “[T]he fact that the source of adverse testimony at the trial is an expert originally employed by the defendant, rather than the state, will, if it is made known to the jury, almost certainly carry added weight.” United States ex rel. Edney v. Smith, 425 F.Supp. 1038, 1053 (E.D.N.Y.1976), aff’d, 556 F.2d 556 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 958, 97 S.Ct. 2683, 53 L.Ed.2d 276 (1977). In the instant case the jury was in fact informed that Dr. Wilson was employed by the defendant. Further prejudice may result because a defendant would be less inclined to be completely candid with a defense-employed psychiatrist if he knew that the psychiatrist could be a witness against him. Id.
The Missouri eases cited by the principal opinion do not even purport to deal with the situation before us — an expert witness employed by the defense who is not to testify in the context of the attorney-client privilege. The cited cases all pertain to waiver of the physician-patient privilege, which is not the question before us. None of the Missouri cases cited discuss whether or not an examination by an expert to see whether a particular medical defense is available is a necessary adjunct of the representation by the attorney of his client and should be viewed the same as communications made by the client to his lawyer in determining what defenses are available.
As shown above, the vast majority of cases in other jurisdictions hold the communications are privileged as an adjunct of the attorney-client privilege. The only case to the contrary cited by the principal opinion is the New York case, People v. Edney, 30 N.Y.2d 620, 385 N.Y.S.2d 23, 350 N.E.2d 400 (1976). The reasoning of that case is that inasmuch as a defendant in New York who pleads insanity can be made to undergo an examination by a prosecution psychiatrist, the defendant therefore reveals to the prosecution the very facts which the physician-*66patient privilege would hold secret. But, the reasoning goes, if he does not plead insanity no waiver would occur and any information divulged to the psychiatrist (evidently referring to his own psychiatrist) would remain privileged. This is difficult to follow because, of course, if we make the assumption that the defendant does not plead insanity, there is no need for a psychiatrist anyway. The case before us is one where the defendant did plead insanity. Additionally, the New York case proceeds on the unrealistic assumption that defendants will in fact be as open with the prosecution psychiatrists as they would be with psychiatrists employed by their own counsel. Why fool ourselves about this?
The principal opinion also cites United States ex rel. Edney v. Smith, 425 F.Supp. 1038 (E.D.N.Y.1976), aff’d without opinion, 556 F.2d 556 (2nd Cir.1977), cert. denied, 431 U.S. 958, 97 S.Ct. 2683, 53 L.Ed.2d 276 (1977), but this case states that the preferred rule is the one advocated in this dissent, pointing out that the purpose of the psychiatric examination is to enable the lawyer to explore more effectively the available defenses. Id. at 1044. The case states further that communications where the client consults the psychiatrist to obtain a recommendation for litigation purposes are protected by the attorney-client privilege in most states even though there is no protection under physician-patient privilege due to a waiver from putting the patient’s condition in issue in the case. Id. at 1047. The court also points out that the law on the question in other states is almost uniformly contrary to New York’s. “Relying on the attorney-client privilege, they do not permit defendant’s psychiatrist to be called.” Id. at 1053. The court pointed out further that the New York rule was prejudicial to the defendant in that an expert employed by the defendant and used against him by the state would carry “added weight” with the jury and also in that it inevitably would cause defendants to be less open and candid with a defense employed psychiatrist. The cited case is strongly in favor of the rule here advocated.
The hypothetical given by the principal opinion about a defendant being able to compel disclosure of the helpful opinion of the prosecutor’s examining psychiatrist who concludes, after examination, that defendant in truth is insane does not mean that Dr. Wilson should have been available to the prosecution in the case at bar. In the hypothetical, for the prosecutor to have suppressed and not made available the evidence favorable to the defendant, would have been reversible error as denial of due process to the defendant under Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 83, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963), even if there were no criminal discovery rule. As a general proposition it can be said, as the principal opinion does, that “It is a poor rule that does not work both ways”, but the aphorism does not apply here. Just because the defendant in the hypothetical is entitled to the report of the prosecutor’s psychiatrist (for due process reasons, as stated above) does not mean the state is entitled to Dr. Wilson’s report or testimony here, because the state has no due process or Brady v. Maryland constitutional right against the defendant. The state cannot charge defendant with violation of due process. Denying the state the right to call Dr. Wilson as a witness will in no way diminish or affect the reciprocal rules of discovery in criminal cases, as is seen by the fact that in civil cases we do not permit one in Dr. Wilson’s position to be called by the opposite party; this has not in any way been devastating or disastrous to discovery.
Accordingly, because the trial court erred by requiring disclosure of Dr. Wilson’s report and allowing the state, over objection, to call him as a rebuttal witness, defendant’s conviction should be reversed and the cause should be remanded for a new trial.

. See United States v. Alvarez, 519 F.2d 1036 (3d Cir.1975); Houston v. State, 602 P.2d 784 (Alaska 1979); People v. Lines, 13 Cal.3d 500, 531 P.2d 793, 119 Cal.Rptr. 225 (1975); State v. Toste, 178 Conn. 626, 424 A.2d 293 (1979); Pouncy v. State, 353 So.2d 640 (Fla.App.1977); People ex rel. Bowman v. Woodward, 63 Ill.2d 382, 349 N.E.2d 57 (1976); State v. Pratt, 284 Md. 516, 398 A.2d 421 (1979); People v. Hilliker, 29 Mich.App. 543, 185 N.W.2d 831 (1971); State v. Kociolek, 23 N.J. 400, 129 A.2d 417 (1957). See generally, Note, Protecting the Confidentiality of Pretrial Psychiatric Disclosures: A Survey of Standards, 51 N.Y.U.L.Rev. 409 (1976).