Background
Christopher Stewart was a patient at a community mental health center whose care team included a licensed clinical social worker, a nurse, a case manager, and a career counselor named Jessica McDonald. When UNH Manchester dismissed Stewart from his classes in September 2022, McDonald informed him and urged him not to return to campus. During a subsequent phone call, Stewart said something to the effect of, “What is it going to take, me doing a mass shooting for me to get what I want?” After McDonald said she would have to report the comment, Stewart called it “a figure of speech” but also texted that “[i]t’s the right thing to do. Even if it means going to jail, it’s the right thing to do.”
McDonald relayed the comment to the treatment team’s supervising social worker, Daniel Ventola, who reported it to Laconia police under the center’s policy requiring disclosure of patients’ dangerous statements to authorities. Police notified UNH Manchester security, which locked and patrolled the campus that evening. Officers apprehended Stewart at his rooming house, and a rifle and related supplies were found in his car and bedroom. A grand jury indicted him on one count of criminal threatening under RSA 631:4, I(e), alleging he threatened a mass shooting with reckless disregard for causing evacuation, serious public inconvenience, fear, or terror.
Before trial, Stewart moved to preclude testimony from McDonald and Ventola on the ground that his communications were protected by the therapist-patient privilege under RSA 330-A:32. The trial court denied the motion, ruling that the State had demonstrated an “essential need” for the communications. A jury convicted Stewart, and the trial court also denied his motion to dismiss for insufficient evidence. He appealed both rulings to the New Hampshire Supreme Court.
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court affirmed on both issues. On the privilege question, the court applied the two-part “essential need” test: the requesting party must show (1) the information is unavailable from another source, and (2) a compelling justification warrants disclosure. The first prong was undisputed — Stewart made the threat only to McDonald. On the second prong, the court held that two factors together constituted compelling justification: the acute public safety interest in investigating and deterring mass shooting threats, and the fact that Stewart’s communications were not merely evidence of one element of the offense but were the entire substance of the crime charged. The court reasoned that by the time of prosecution Stewart’s privacy interest had already been undermined by McDonald’s required disclosure to police, and that the public interest in preventing mass violence outweighed the statutory privilege’s purpose of encouraging candor in mental health treatment.
On sufficiency of the evidence, the court reviewed the recklessness element de novo and held that the circumstantial evidence was adequate for a rational jury to convict. The center had a standard practice of informing new patients of its disclosure policy, permitting the jury to infer Stewart knew his statement would be reported to police. The jury could also reasonably conclude — based on common understanding — that a threatened mass shooting carries an obvious risk of causing evacuation, terror, or serious public inconvenience, regardless of Stewart’s subsequent attempt to characterize his words as mere hyperbole.
Key Takeaways
- Under New Hampshire’s “essential need” framework, a court may pierce the therapist-patient privilege when privileged communications are both unavailable from any other source and their disclosure serves a sufficiently compelling public interest — here, the investigation and deterrence of mass violence threats cleared that bar.
- The centrality of privileged communications to an entire prosecution (not merely to a single element) strengthens the case for essential need, analogous to the court’s prior holding in State v. Kupchun regarding commitment hearings.
- Criminal threatening under RSA 631:4, I(e) requires only recklessness, not intent; a defendant’s awareness of a mental health center’s mandatory reporting policy, combined with the universally understood gravity of mass shooting threats, can satisfy that element by circumstantial evidence alone.
- Justice Gould, joined by Chief Justice MacDonald, concurred in the result but urged reconsideration of the “essential need” doctrine, arguing it is a judicially created exception unsupported by the text of RSA 330-A:32 and that it erodes legislative policy choices protecting patient candor.
Why It Matters
This decision clarifies when New Hampshire courts may override the therapist-patient privilege in a criminal prosecution: a threatened mass shooting — where the privileged statement is not just key evidence but the entirety of the charged conduct — can satisfy both prongs of the essential need test. Practitioners advising mental health providers should note that New Hampshire’s mandatory-reporting policy interacts with the privilege in ways that can expose patients to criminal prosecution based on disclosed statements, even when those statements were made in a clinical setting.
The special concurrence adds significant doctrinal tension. Two justices signaled that five decades of judge-made essential-need exceptions to statutory privileges may have overstepped judicial authority and invited the legislature to address the matter directly. Attorneys litigating privilege questions in New Hampshire should watch for potential legislative or judicial recalibration of this doctrine in future cases.