State v. Guay

I join fully in the majority’s thoughtful opinion in this case. I write separately, however, to address an issue that has troubled me for some time, that being our repeated use of the phrase “essential and reasonably necessary” as the standard for determining whether otherwise privileged materials, such as counseling records of the alleged crime victim, must be disclosed to the defense for use at trial.

We first used the phrase to describe the standard for disclosure of privileged materials to a criminal defendant in State v. Farrow, 116 N.H. 731, 733 (1976). In Farrow, we were “faced with the…