Court Opinion

ID: 9650084
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 15:23:50.977298+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:18.098536
License: Public Domain

O’HERN, J.,
dissenting.
I do not believe that our Legislature intends, or that our Rules of Evidence contemplate, that a spiritual adviser should be free to *435disclose a confidential spiritual conversation. I reach that conclusion because (1) an overwhelming majority of other jurisdictions construe the privilege as a bar to the revelation of a confession by the cleric, (2) New Jersey law has never recognized a cleric’s right to waive the seal of confession, and (3) our state committees on evidence would never have recommended so fundamental a change in doctrine without explicit discussion of the issue.
I
I begin by analyzing the purposes of the privilege. “[T]he public * * * has a right to every [person’s] evidence. * * * [A]ll privileges of exemption * * * are exceptional * * 8 Wigmore on Evidence § 2192 (McNaughton rev. 1961). Wigmore calls the rules of privilege “requirements of extrinsic policy * * * because some consideration extrinsic to the investigation of truth is regarded as more important and overpowering.” Id. at § 2175. We do not give attorneys a privilege to refuse to disclose the communications of their clients to save attorneys the time and trouble of appearing in court. We afford that privilege to serve the larger purpose of making clients feel free to obtain assistance in the most troubled times of their lives. Clients must be free to consult with an attorney and must be certain that unless they intend a continuing course of criminal conduct, their confidential communications will be protected. State v. Toscano, 13 N.J. 418, 424, 100 A.2d 170 (1953) (holding that attorney-client privilege “is now universally recognized as resting upon the policy in favor of affording to the client freedom from apprehension in consulting his legal adviser”). Society deems that relationship so important that a lawyer may not reveal even the client’s disclosure of a prior crime.
The most commonly-offered rationale for the clergy privilege is society’s desire to foster the eleric-confider relationship. Several evidentiary privileges, including the physician-patient privilege, *436N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-22.1 to -22.7,1 the attorney-client privilege, Evidence Rule 26, and the marital-communication privilege, Evidence Rule 28, are designed to foster special relationships between persons by shielding communications within those relationships. “The law has determined that, in the long run, society gains more by fostering such relationships than it gains from disclosure of communications within those relationships.” Mary H. Mitchell, Must Clergy Tell?: Child Abuse Reporting Requirements Versus the Clergy Privilege and Free Exercise of Religion, 71 Minn. L.Rev. 723, 762 (1987).
Most clergy-privilege statutes accomplish that goal of protecting the cleric-penitent relationship by granting the power of waiver to the penitent alone:
Statutes creating the privilege vary, but generally are designed to safeguard the clergyman’s status as a secure repository for the confessant’s confidences. Most penitent-priest statutes have a common feature: they explicitly prohibit the clergyman from disclosing the contents of a confidential communication “without the consent of the person making the communication.”
[Seidman v. Fishburne-Hudgins Educ. Found., Inc., 724 F.2d 413, 415 (4th Cir.1984) (citation omitted) (quoting Or.Evid.Code, Rule 506 (1981)).]
For example, in reviewing New York’s clergy-privilege statute, which allows waiver only by the penitent, the New York Court of Appeals observed that the Legislature intended to recognize “the urgent need of people to confide in, without fear of reprisal, those entrusted with the pressing task of offering spiritual guidance so that harmony with one’s self and others can be realized.” Keenan v. Gigante, 47 N.Y.2d 160, 417 N.Y.S.2d 226, 229, 390 N.E.2d 1151, 1154 (1979).
The language of our statute is well adapted to that “urgent need of people,” stating in plain terms that no member of the clergy shall be either “allowed or compelled” to disclose a confidential *437communication received in a professional role. Evid.R. 29. That means at the least that a cleric cannot disclose a confession without the consent of the penitent. That construction prevails throughout the United States. A review of other statutes indicates that only three states (Illinois, Maryland, and Virginia) allow a cleric to disclose a confession without the penitent’s consent. All three statutes speak only in terms of the clergy not being compelled to disclose confidential spiritual communications. None prohibits a cleric from breaching such confidences voluntarily. See Ill.Ann.Stat. ch. 735, para. 5/8-803 (Smith-Hurd 1993); Md. Code Ann., Cts. & Jud.Proc. § 9-111 (1993); Va.Code Ann. § 8.01-400 (Michie 1993). Caselaw supports such an interpretation of the privilege in Illinois and Virginia. See People v. Bole, 223 Ill.App.2d 247, 165 Ill.Dec. 739, 585 N.E.2d 135 (1991) (allowing minister to testify, over defendant’s objection, about defendant’s statements to minister concerning number of times defendant had sexual intercourse with stepdaughter), aff'd, 155 Ill.2d 188, 184 Ill.Dec. 423, 613 N.E.2d 740 (1993); Seidman, supra, 724 F.2d 413 (holding that plain meaning of Virginia statute grants privilege to cleric alone, not to penitent). Six other statutes that do not seem to grant a privilege to the penitent actually have that effect because in those states the cleric is deemed to be an incompetent witness, that is, a witness who is not permitted to testify at all about such communications. See Ga.Code Ann. § 24-9-22 (Michie 1993); Ind.Code Ann. § 34-1-14-5 (West 1993); Mich.Comp.Laws Ann. § 600.2156 (West 1993); Mo.Ann.Stat. § 491.060 (Vernon 1993); Vt.Stat.Ann. tit. 12, § 1607 (1993); Wyo. Stat. § 1-12-101 (1993). I believe that the construction of the privilege that requires the penitent’s consent to disclosure is prevalent because such a construction fosters the public policies behind the privilege.
II
A.
The majority, I believe, mistakenly focuses on the annotation to the Jacobs Committee’s Comment on proposed Evidence Rule 29 *438of the Uniform, Rules of Evidence (1953), which stated that “[u]nder the [Uniform R]ule the penitent has a privilege to refuse to disclose his confession whereas under the [then-extant New Jersey] statute he has no privilege at all.” Report of the Committee on the Revision of the Law of Evidence to the Supreme Court of New Jersey 77 (1955) (“Jacobs Committee Report ”). The statute did not confer a privilege on the penitent because any privilege would have been redundant in light of the then-absolute prohibition of clerical disclosure of confessions. Under the 1955 formulation of the statute, a cleric could be neither “allowed [n]or compelled to disclose in any court, or to any public officer, a confession made to him in his professional character * * *.” L.1947, c. 324. The question of privilege did not arise until 1956 when the Commission to Study the Improvement of the Law of Evidence (“Bigelow Commission”) recommended to the Legislature the addition of a waiver provision to the statute.2 Hence, the deference due to the comments of one so astute as Justice Jacobs must be tempered by the realization that his committee was referring to a statute that gave ironclad protection to the penitent, an ironclad protection that the majority views as corroded by the waiver amendment recommended by the Bigelow Commission.
Moreover, any concern of the Jacobs Committee that proposed Evidence Rule 29 might have permitted the penitent to force a cleric to violate his or her sacred oath by disclosing a confidential spiritual communication was unfounded. The Drafters’ Comment to Uniform Rule 29, which both the majority opinion and the Jacobs Committee Report quote, clearly states that “[t]his rule permits either priest, broadly defined, or penitent to claim the privilege.” See ante at 426, 640 A.2d 827; Jacobs Committee *439Report, supra, at 76. The Jacobs Committee rejected Uniform Rule 29 because it wanted to ensure that the clergy could not be unilaterally compelled by a penitent’s waiver to disclose a confidential communication. However, the clergy is protected from such a risk if both the cleric and the penitent hold the privilege because then the penitent cannot compel the cleric to disclose the confidential communication. (Of course, the penitent can always testify about the confession in his or her own defense, despite the objections of the cleric.) A further consideration about the Jacobs Committee’s conclusions is that the notion that penitents could compel clerics to disclose their confessions, although disturbing, is not nearly as threatening as the notion that a cleric could voluntarily disclose such communications against the penitent’s wishes.
Concededly, the statute did not explicitly grant a privilege to the penitent; however, such a privilege was simply unnecessary in light of the statute’s formulation. Furthermore, no New Jersey case has ever held that the penitent does not have such a privilege. The majority’s discussion of In re Murtha, 115 N.J.Super. 380, 279 A.2d 889, certif. denied, 59 N.J. 239, 281 A.2d 278 (1971), is inapplicable. In that case, the court admitted the evidence not because the penitent had no privilege but because the court believed that the Catholic nun involved in the case did not meet the former definition of a priest or cleric. If the nun in Murtha had fulfilled the definition’s requirements, our Court would have held that either the statutory privilege or a common-law privilege barred the testimony at issue.
B.
The Bigelow Commission’s addition of the reference to the waiver provisions of Evidence Rule 37 raises many questions. Until the Appellate Division opinion in this case, the Commentary to the New Jersey Rules of Evidence had simply assumed that
[t]he inclusion of this [waiver] provision by the Bigelow Commission was probably in error because it contradicts the thrust of the rule and the original statute, namely that under no circumstances should a religious figure be considered as a source of evidence of this type. Since the person who- made the confidential *440communication is not the holder of this privilege, no conduct on his part falling within the scope of Rule 37 can effectively compel disclosure by the religious figure.
[Biunno, Current N.J. Rules of Evidence, comment 2 on EvicLR. 29 (1988) (emphasis added).]
The majority views the Bigelow Commission’s inclusion of that waiver provision and the Jacobs Committee’s comment that the penitent has no privilege as an acknowledgment of a unilateral confessional privilege that the cleric may waive without consent of the penitent. The language of the waiver reference is most inept for the interpretation that the Court reaches. Evidence Rule 29 provides the following:
Subject to Rule 37 [the waiver provision], a clergyman, minister or other person or practitioner authorized to perform similar functions, of any religion shall not be allowed or compelled to disclose a confession or other confidential communication made to him' in his professional character, or as a spiritual advisor in the course of the discipline or practice of the religious body to which he belongs or of the religion which he professes, nor shall he be compelled to disclose the confidential relations and communications between and among him and individuals, couples, families or groups with respect to the exercise of his professional counselling role.
[Emphasis added.]
Evidence Rule 37 provides the following:
A person waives his right or privilege to refuse to disclose or prevent another from disclosing a specified matter if he or any other person while the holder thereof has (a) contracted with anyone not to claim the right or privilege or, (b) without coercion and with knowledge of his right or privilege, made disclosure of any part of the privileged matter or consented to such a disclosure made by anyone.
A disclosure which is itself privileged or otherwise protected by the common law, statutes or rules of court of this State, or by lawful contract, shall not constitute a waiver under this section. The failure of a witness to claim a right or privilege with respect to one question shall not operate as a waiver with respect to any other question.
To begin with, the “clergy privilege” does not speak of the cleric having a privilege, even though the Rule’s heading, which is normally not to be used for interpretive purposes, refers to a “privilege.” When the language of a statute does not fit the meaning ascribed to the statute, we can safely assume that the Legislature did not intend the ascribed meaning. The generic waiver provisions of Evidence Rule 37 simply do not fit the *441context of Evidence Rule 29. That a cleric would “contractf ] with [someone] not to claim the right or privilege” is an incredible proposition. That a cleric would “without coercion and with knowledge of his right or privilege” disclose a confession is an equally implausible scenario. A cleric who would “consent[] to such a disclosure made by anyone” else is also a highly improbable character. To create a situation in which Evidence Rule 37 would apply to Evidence Rule 29, we must conjure up, for example, a priest who would blurt out at a social gathering that penitent Jones mentioned during confession that he has visited a crack house, or a priest who would give consent to Smith, who happened to be standing near the confessional, to disclose Jones’s confession. The utter incongruity of (1) interpreting the Rule to give the priest the right to waive the privilege not to testify when the Rule clearly declares that clerics are not “allowed” to testify and (2) basing that right of waiver on the concept of the priest entering. into a contract of disclosure with a tabloid publisher or blurting out a confession in a crowded, elevator is unthinkable.
The Bigelow Commission may have included the waiver provision of Evidence Rule 37 because the proposed Evidence Rule 29 could have applied to a penitent who, having already disclosed the communication, sought thereafter to claim the privilege. When the Bigelow Commission inserted the subject-to-waiver provision in Evidence Rule 29, it did not need to explain that the cleric could never disclose the confession without the consent of the penitent because the public would have assumed that a cleric would never break the seal of confidence. That inviolability of the confessional was so imbedded in our legal culture that no one considered the possibility that a penitent would have to request the privilege’s invocation.
Ill
To conclude that the penitent has no privilege, one must infer that the Legislature intended that the most privileged of all communications be converted into the least. The majority’s conclusion that the privilege belongs only to the cleric creates an *442exception so startling that it could not possibly be what the Legislature intended. The lawyer-client privilege, Evidence Rule 26, the physician-patient privilege, N.J.S.A. 2A:84A-22.1 to -22.7, the psychologist-patient privilege, N.J.S.A 45:14B-28, the marriage-counselor privilege, N.J.S.A 45:8B-29, and the victim-counselor privilege, N.J.S.A 2A:84A-22.13 to -22.16, all belong, at least in part, to the confider. I cannot believe that our Legislature, which has codified all those privileges by concurrent resolution, would have intended that of all the privileges it has recognized, the confider would hold the privilege except in the case of a communication to clergy. Could the Legislature have deemed spiritual counseling a second-hand ministry, of less importance to society than lawyering or marriage counseling or victim counseling? I do not believe that the Legislature intended such an anomaly. The statutory privilege is unambiguous. It states that a member of the clergy shall not be “allowed or compelled” to disclose a confidential communication. Evid.R. 29.
The overwhelming argument against the majority’s conclusion is the virtual certainty that the New Jersey Legislature would not, without serious debate, deprive its constituents of the right to confide in their spiritual advisors. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), as amicus curiae, has argued that denying the privilege of nondisclosure to the penitent imposes an unconstitutional burden on the penitent’s right to the free exercise of religion because that denial is not narrowly tailored to advance a compelling state interest. The State’s interest in obtaining all relevant testimony may be compelling in some cases, such as instances of continuing child abuse. However, as interpreted by the majority, Evidence Rule 29 denies penitents the right to bar disclosure of their spiritual confessions under any circumstances.
Although most penitents still trust their priests, ministers, or counsellors, they would be utterly shocked to find that they have no right to privacy in the confessional. Can one conceive of the reaction that would have followed in this state if someone in the Legislature in 1957 had stood up and said, “I want the clergy to be able to disclose confessions at will, no matter what the person *?giving the confession wants, because the sanctity of religious confessions must give way to the needs of a lawsuit.” I doubt that any legislator would have taken such an extreme position.3 Given common notions of what is right, what is permissible, and what is, to some, sacred, most people, not just members of one sect or another, would have regarded such a proposal as unthinkable, or at least as an affront to religion and religious people. I do not say that to inflame emotions, but rather to indicate a very strong conviction about the legislative intent behind the cleric-penitent privilege. We should not interpret the language of an act to reach a result that we are convinced the Legislature did not intend. We accord broad latitude to the Legislature’s judgment on how it may best serve its purposes. We will not even permit “the intent of. the Legislature to be subverted by language which, read literally, appears to contravene that which the Legislature actually intended.” In re Boardwalk Regency Casino License Application, 180 N.J.Super. 324, 344, 434 A.2d 1111 (App.Div.1981), aff'd, 90 N.J. 361, 447 A.2d 1335 (1982); see also State v. State Troopers Fraternal Ass’n, 134 N.J. 393, 401, 634 A.2d 478 (1993) (holding that even though literal reading of statute could result in application of law to State Police, legislative purpose did not suggest that result). Here, the language of Evidence Rule 29 (the cleric shall not be “allowed or compelled” to disclose the confidence) and of Evidence Rule 37 (a person can waive a privilege through “contract,” disclosure “without coercion and .with knowledge,” or “consent” to disclosure by another) support the unquestionable conclusion that the Legislature could not possibly have intended that clerics be free to disclose religious confidences. Circumstances in which the Legislature may want to alter the privilege, as in the case of continuing child abuse, may arise; however, that type of legislative change has not yet occurred and is not addressed here. See, e.g., L.1992, c. 142 (modifying spousal privileges).
*444IV
This is a shocking case. Craig Szemple is implicated in the commission of crimes of brutal violence. Had he been visited in prison by a psychologist and sought mental counseling, he would have had the privilege to bar the psychologist’s disclosure of their discussions of the crime. Had he been visited in prison by an attorney and sought counseling on how he should prepare his defense, he would have had the privilege to bar the attorney’s disclosure of their discussions of the crime. Instead of seeking psychological counseling or legal counseling, Szemple sought spiritual counseling. If the purpose of the cleric-penitent privilege is to foster the relationship between a confider and a spiritual counselor, that purpose is not served when the cleric becomes a witness for the prosecution.
I suspect that the issue in this case will rarely, if ever, arise again. In the almost fifty years since the adoption of the privilege, no member of the clergy has, in any reported case, ever betrayed a penitent’s spiritual trust. Szemple’s case should not turn on the fortuity of his encounter with a cleric whose religious views encompassed disclosure of spiritual confidences. The clergy privilege exists not for the cleric to choose among the worthy members of the flock but to furnish a “secure repository for the confessant’s confidences.” Seidman, supra, 724 F.2d at 415. Because the evidentiary privilege belongs to both the cleric and the penitent, we cannot sustain a conviction based on the disclosure of a confidential spiritual communication.
Chief Justice WILENTZ and Justice STEIN join in this opinion.
For affirmance—Justices CLIFFORD, HANDLER, POLLOCK and GARIBALDI—4.
For reversal—Chief Justice WILENTZ and O’HERN and STEIN—3.

 Consistent with the majority, ante at 410 n. 1, 640 A.2d at 819, I will use the old numbering for the New Jersey Rules of Evidence in this dissent. For those privileges, such as the physician-patient privilege, which we did not adopt as Evidence Rules until we changed the numbering of the Rules, this dissent cites to the statutes.

 The Legislature appointed the Bigelow Commission to review the Jacobs Committee’s draft in fulfillment of the Legislature’s concurrent responsibility for the Rules of Evidence. J.Res. 15, 179th Leg., 1955 New Jersey Laws 1026. The Bigelow Commission adopted the Jacobs Committee draft to a large extent. However, it broadened the cleric-penitent privilege to cover more than just confessions and subjected the privilege to the waiver provisions of Evidence Rule 37.

 The position is extreme, for this case is not just about waiver in criminal cases or even murder cases. The Court’s holding means that a cleric may waive the seal of.confidence in any case, for example in a tax matter.