Facts
- Rebecca Presler was about six months pregnant and had two young children.
- Child Protective Services (CPS), part of Washington’s Department of Social and Health Services, received a report that Presler was using methamphetamine while pregnant and around her children.
- CPS investigated, placed the children with Presler’s mother, and required Presler to participate in substance-abuse treatment.
- After CPS learned Presler was not complying with treatment requirements, CPS notified law enforcement.
- Police obtained and executed a search warrant at Presler’s home, where officers found methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.
- Later the same day, Nicole Reed, a CPS employee, took Presler to a hospital for a drug test connected to the CPS matter.
- The hospital test was positive for methamphetamine, and Reed reported the result to law enforcement.
- Presler was charged with possession of methamphetamine and proceeded to jury trial.
- Trial counsel did not move to suppress the hospital drug-test result before trial, and the result was admitted at trial.
- Presler was convicted and appealed, arguing ineffective assistance of counsel based on the failure to seek suppression, asserting the test should have been excluded (including on psychologist-patient privilege grounds).
Issues
- Whether Presler received ineffective assistance of counsel when trial counsel did not move to suppress the hospital drug-test result obtained through CPS and later reported to law enforcement.
- Whether Presler could show Strickland prejudice by establishing that a suppression motion likely would have been granted (including based on psychologist-patient privilege or dependency-related confidentiality limits) and that exclusion likely would have changed the verdict.
Decision
- The Court of Appeals affirmed Presler’s conviction.
- The court held Presler failed to show prejudice because she did not demonstrate that the trial court likely would have suppressed the drug-test evidence.
- The court relied in part on the statutory framework requiring CPS employees to report to law enforcement when they have reasonable cause to believe a child has suffered abuse or neglect, which supported the lawfulness of CPS reporting the positive test.
Legal Principles
- Ineffective assistance of counsel requires (1) deficient performance and (2) prejudice—a reasonable probability of a different outcome absent counsel’s error. (Strickland.)
- When ineffective assistance is based on the failure to file a suppression motion, the defendant must show the motion likely would have been granted; otherwise, the defendant cannot establish prejudice.
- Statutes imposing mandatory reporting duties on CPS workers for suspected child abuse or neglect can authorize CPS communications with law enforcement and weaken suppression arguments based on confidentiality or privilege.
- A defendant must connect the asserted privilege or confidentiality rule to an exclusion remedy in the criminal case and show it applies to the challenged evidence on the case record.
Conclusion
The court affirmed Presler’s methamphetamine possession conviction because she did not establish Strickland prejudice: on this record she failed to show that a motion to suppress the CPS-directed hospital urinalysis result, or related testimony about it, likely would have succeeded, including under the psychologist-patient privilege theory she advanced on appeal.