finding that “the simple fact that Hinckley’s treatment team and the Hospital’s Review Board came to different conclusions does not suggest, in our view, any improper motivations on the part of the Review Board”
How later courts described this case
- finding that “the simple fact that Hinckley’s treatment team and the Hospital’s Review Board came to different conclusions does not suggest, in our view, any improper motivations on the part of the Review Board”
- noting that the privilege would be meaningless, “if all someone seeking information otherwise protected under the privilege had to establish is that there was disagreement within the governmental entity at some point in the decisionmaking [sic] process.”
- “[T]he balance weighs strongly against granting ... access to the [agency’s] internal deliberations, notwithstanding the seriousness of the present litigation.”
- “The deliberative process privilege would soon be meaningless, if all someone seeking information otherwise protected under the privilege had to establish is that there was disagreement within the governmental entity at some point in the decisionmaking process.”
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
KAREN LeCRAFT HENDERSON, Circuit Judge,
concurring in the judgment:
I agree with the majority that “there is no indication that the district court actually relied on the fact that the Hospital Review Board had denied Hinckley a conditional release” and that “it is clearer still that the district court did not rely on the substance of the Review Board’s internal deliberations in coming to its decision, precisely because the district court had no knowledge of the content of those deliberations.” Maj. Op. at 283 (emphasis original). In United States v. Ecker, 543 F.2d 178 (D.C.Cir.1976), this Court emphasized the district court’s expanded role in resolving a conditional release petition pursuant to D.C.Code § 24-301:
Thus, in conditional release proceedings (as well as unconditional release proceedings) the role of the district court (i.e., the standard of review)
... is not simply to review the hospital’s decision for unreasonableness, but rather itself to decide the ultimate question: whether the present status of the patient is such that continued confinement *287 [without conditional release] is justifiable.
... In order to approve a conditional release, we hold that the district court must independently weigh the evidence and make a de novo determination that the patient will not in the reasonable future endanger himself or others.
Id. at 186-87 (internal footnote and quotations omitted) (emphasis and brackets original). This is so because, as the Ecker court recognized, “when a district court is asked to review a conditional release certification the basic policy underlying section 301(e) comes into play, and the court must decide whether the hospital’s proposal ‘provide[s] treatment and cure for the individual in [sic] manner which affords reasonable assurance for the public safety.’ ” Id. at 182-83 (internal footnote omitted) (brackets original). The record reveals that the district court followed Ecker to the letter, “independently weighting] and evaluating] the evidence.” Id. at 184 . The district court relied heavily upon the opinion of the government’s psychiatrist, Dr. Raymond F. Patterson, who described Hinckley’s “past and continued propensity for deception and secretiveness, especially to those responsible for treating him.” United States v. Hinckley, 967 F.Supp. 557, 560 (D.D.C.1997). And in evaluating the opinions of Hinckley’s experts, the district court looked to Hinckley’s own words:
Moreover, in considering the opinions of his experts, the Court is reminded of a journal entry made by Mr. Hinckley in 1987 in which he wrote:
I dare say that not one psychiatrist who has analyzed me knows any more about me than the average person on the street who has read about me in the newspapers. Psychiatry is a guessing game and I do my best to keep the fools guessing about me. They will never know the true John Hinckley. Only I fully understand myself.
Tr. 156-157; (stipulated to by counsel for Petitioner). What is particularly disturbing is that this statement was written at a time when the Petitioner had already undergone five years of treatment and had convinced his treatment clinicians that he had recovered sufficiently for conditional release. Statements such as these cause the Court to proceed carefully in weighing current assessments of the Petitioner by his experts.
Id. at 562 . As the majority observes, the district court “never mentioned the Review Board’s decision in this discussion.” Maj. Op. at 282. The record plainly manifests that the district court did not rely on the Hospital Review Board’s recommendation (indeed, the court did not deem it relevant except insofar as it caused the court to conduct an even more “exacting” review, 967 F.Supp. at 559 ). Accordingly, there is no need to reach the extraneous deliberative process privilege claim and I respectfully decline to join the majority’s discussion of it.