Behind bars | Waiving client confidentiality

Last month Ian Brady's independent mental health advocate Jackie Powell was arrested following allegations that she had failed to hand over letters that contained information about the location of 12-year-old Keith Bennett's corpse on Saddleworth Moor. Powell isn't a lawyer whose communications with clients are protected by privilege, but had she been one, should she have handed the letter to the police? A 1970s case from sleepy Upstate New York provides a troubling answer.

In the summer of 1973, Robert Garrow Jr stood charged in Hamilton County with the murder of Phil Domblewski. Garrow was assigned two attorneys, Frank H. Armani and Francis R. Belge. Armani and Belge were somewhat unconventional attorneys. Armani, who was convinced from the outset of his client's insanity, arranged for Garrow to be hypnotised during conferences. When under hypnosis, Garrow revealed the location of two missing girls whose murders he had not been charged with.

To test Garrow's instructions, Belge and Armani undertook gruesome site visits. Following Garrow's directions, the attorneys found the body of Susan Petz was in the airshaft of a mine and the body of 16-year-old Alicia Hauck, in Oakwood Cemetery, Syracuse. Belge took photographs of Hauck's corpse for use at trial and, after disturbing the corpse during his investigations, repositioned the girl's head.

Breach of duty

Pressure on police to find the missing girls mounted. There was hope that Susan Petz was still alive '“ she had gone missing only a short time before Garrow's arrest. Armani was confronted by her father, Daniel Petz, who pleaded with him for information about his daughter's, or her corpse's, whereabouts. Armani and Belge remained silent on what they knew of the girls' corpses.

Garrow's attorneys did not give the location of the missing girls' bodies until 1974 when their client's killing of Petz and Hauck was deployed as evidence of his insanity at the time of the murder of Phil Domblewski.
Belge and Armani were pilloried. How could they have known of the girls' deaths and not told police? An investigation commenced into both men's alleged violation of sections 4143 and 4200(1) of the New York State's Public Health Law, which respectively required that a person's death without medical attendance be reported and that a decent burial should be accorded to the dead. A Grand Jury later no-billed Armani but lead-counsel Belge was indicted on both charges.

In People v Belge, 372 N.Y.S. 2d 798 (County Ct. 1975), Gale J dismissed the indictment against Garrow's attorney. The 'sacred trust' of confidentiality had to be upheld, with Gale J concluding that Belge had 'conducted himself as an officer of the court with all the zeal at his command to protect the constitutional rights of his client'.