## Facts

- Steven Gene Chase received psychiatric treatment from Dr. Kay Dieter for anger-related symptoms and was diagnosed with bipolar II disorder.
- In an August 1999 therapy session, Chase showed Dr. Dieter a planner listing personal identifiers for various people, including two FBI agents, and discussed having thought about injuring or killing listed individuals and having threatened some in prior years.
- Dr. Dieter warned Chase that providing specifics could trigger a duty to disclose to protect others.
- Separately, Chase made threatening statements about the FBI agents to a Kaiser Permanente clinic telephone operator; those non-therapy statements supported the count of conviction.
- The government charged Chase under 18 U.S.C. § 115(a)(1)(B) with threatening federal officials; the jury convicted him on the operator-based count and acquitted him on a count tied to therapy-session threats.
- Over objection, the district court allowed Dr. Dieter to testify about Chase’s therapy statements, concluding the psychotherapist-patient privilege did not apply because the threats were credible.

## Issues

1. Whether the federal psychotherapist-patient testimonial privilege bars compelled testimony about a patient’s threats made during psychotherapy, or whether a judicially created “dangerous patient” exception removes such communications from the privilege.
2. If admitting privileged psychotherapy communications was error, whether the error was harmless as to the count of conviction.

## Decision

- The en banc Ninth Circuit held that Chase’s communications to Dr. Dieter during psychotherapy were privileged and should not have been admitted.
- The court declined to create a “dangerous patient” exception to the federal psychotherapist-patient testimonial privilege.
- The court affirmed the conviction because the erroneous admission of Dr. Dieter’s testimony was harmless in light of the separate, non-privileged evidence supporting the convicted count and the jury’s acquittal on the therapy-based count.

## Legal Principles

- Under Federal Rule of Evidence 501, confidential communications between a licensed psychotherapist and a patient made in the course of diagnosis or treatment are protected by a federal testimonial privilege.
- The possibility that a therapist may have a duty or permission to disclose information to prevent harm does not itself create an evidentiary exception permitting compelled trial testimony about privileged psychotherapy communications.
- The Ninth Circuit does not recognize a judicially created “dangerous patient” exception to the psychotherapist-patient testimonial privilege.
- Improper admission of privileged psychotherapist-patient communications is subject to harmless-error review; a conviction may stand if supported by independent, non-privileged evidence.

## Conclusion

The Ninth Circuit ruled that threats communicated in psychotherapy remain protected by the federal psychotherapist-patient testimonial privilege and refused to create a “dangerous patient” exception, but affirmed because the district court’s erroneous admission of the psychiatrist’s testimony did not affect the conviction resting on separate, non-privileged threats.


United States v. Chase, 340 F.3d 978 (9th Cir. 2003) (en banc)