Clients and testimony

I understand that it can be difficult to summarize the substance of a petition to the N.C. Supreme Court in a short column. However, Steve Ford's Feb. 10 column "Years in prison -- but is he a killer?" oversimplified what was being asked of the court in the petition for review filed by UNC law professors Rich Rosen and Ken Broun and former Chief Justice I. Beverly Lake Jr. on behalf of Lee Wayne Hunt.

The petition primarily asked the Supreme Court to review a decision by a Superior Court judge that critical testimony in the case could not be considered because it was protected by attorney-client privilege. The decision by the Superior Court judge basically overruled precedent of the N.C. Supreme Court established by the case "In re Miller" in 2003, which outlined extremely narrow circumstances in which those protected communications can be considered.

The communications in the Hunt case fall squarely into that narrow exceptional circumstance. However, it seems that what the Supreme Court interprets as being written between the lines of the Miller opinion is that North Carolina courts can find narrow exceptions to admit protected communications only if it is used to convict the guilty, not if it supports someone's claim of innocence.

Christine Mumma

Durham

(The writer, an attorney, is executive director of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence.)