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Guido v. State2/18/2000
The defendant, Salvatore Guido (applicant), appeals from the denial of his application for post-conviction relief, following a conviction of driving under the influence with serious bodily injury resulting in violation of G.L. 1956 § 31-27-2.6. After his conviction, the applicant appealed, and we denied and dismissed this direct appeal in State v. Guido, 698 A.2d 729 (R.I. 1997). The facts underlying his conviction are fully set forth in that opinion, and need not be reiterated at length here. See id. at 732-33. In that opinion we rejected the applicant's arguments that his hospital medical records, containing evidence of his blood-alcohol level on the night of the accident, were unlawfully obtained through a police officer acting as an agent of the grand jury and used by the prosecution. Id. at 733. The applicant now raises similar arguments in light of In re Doe, 717 A.2d 1129 (R.I. 1998), and contends that his application for post-conviction relief should have been granted. The hearing justice rejected this contention, and, after considering this appeal in conference pursuant to Rule 12A(6)(b) of the Supreme Court Rules of Appellate Procedure, so do we.
As was explained in Guido, applicant was taken to Rhode Island Hospital following a head-on motor-vehicle collision, where blood samples were drawn from him and tested for the presence of alcohol. Guido, 698 A.2d at 732. Three days later a police officer who was investigating the accident appeared before a statewide grand jury and requested subpoenas duces tecum to obtain hospital medical records relating to applicant's blood-alcohol level. Id. The officer also asked to be made an agent of the grand jury for return of service on the subpoenas. Id. After receiving the records, the officer turned them over to the Office of the Attorney General, which used them to determine that probable cause existed to charge applicant pursuant to a criminal information. Id. The applicant argued that his Fourth Amendment rights had been violated when the police officer obtained his medical records, that his records were privileged under the Confidentiality of Health Care Information Act (CHCIA), G.L. 1956 chapter 37.3 of title 5, and should not have been obtained without his consent, and, finally, that the Office of the Attorney General had abused the grand jury system. Guido, 698 A.2d at 731.
We recognized, first, that "grand juries are less cabined by Fourth Amendment restrictions" than are other agents of the state. Id. at 733. Furthermore, we held that applicant had no legitimate expectation of privacy in his medical records. Id. We also determined that the then-applicable provision of the CHCIA, § 5-37.3-4, on which he relied, was constitutionally flawed and could not prohibit judicial access to these types of records. Id. at 734. Although we found it "suspicious" that the medical records were not directly turned over to the grand jury, we concluded there was no reversible error in those circumstances. Id. at 737. Even though the grand jury was only "peripherally involved," it did authorize the subpoenas, and there was no "serious impairment to the integrity of the grand jury process." Id. at 737-38. Moreover, we were bolstered in this view because the prosecutor had later obtained the same medical records by way of a subpoena properly issued pursuant to Rule 17(c) of the Superior Court Rules of Criminal Procedure. Guido, 698 A.2d at 738.
One year later, in In re Doe, 717 A.2d 1129 (R.I. 1998), we were asked to consider whether a specific provision in the amended and renamed Confidentiality of Health Care Communications and Information Act (CHCCIA), chapter 37.3 of title 5, violated the grand jury secrecy requirements of Rule 6(e) of t
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