JUDGE: REHAB WORKERS DON'T HAVE TO TESTIFY AGAINST NOELLE BUSH

ORLANDO -- A judge ruled Monday that staff members at the drug rehab
center where Gov. Jeb Bush's daughter is receiving treatment do not
have to answer police questions about a piece of crack allegedly found
in her shoe.

Circuit Judge Belvin Perry ruled that federal law protecting a drug
treatment patient's privacy outweighed the interest of police officers
in a criminal investigation of drug possession.

If the drug treatment counselors were forced to give testimony, then
"all patients who suffer relapses could be hauled out of treatment
programs and into criminal courts on the whim of a state prosecutor or
police officers," the judge wrote.

Assistant State Attorney Jeff Ashton said his office would
appeal.

"If saying essentially to drug patients, 'Go ahead. You can't be
prosecuted for using drugs at the center,' I wonder if that's valuable
for their treatment?" Ashton said. "The court's decision says we can't
even inquire about how a person got drugs."

Ashton made a similar argument to Perry earlier this month when he
said that refusing to require the drug rehab staffers to cooperate
with authorities would create "a situation in which a drug center is
an island of absolute immunity for prosecution for drug crimes." A
transcript of the closed hearing was made public Monday at the request
of the Orlando Sentinel.

The state attorney's office issued subpoenas for four staffers at the
Center for Drug-Free Living in Orlando after police received a report
from another patient on Sept. 9 that 25-year-old Noelle Bush had been
found with cocaine in her shoe. Investigators also tried to depose one
of the staffers.

Workers at the Center for Drug-Free Living refused to cooperate,
citing privacy concerns. One staff member wrote a statement for
officers but ripped it up after a supervisor intervened.

In his ruling, Perry said Florida's drug court program would be
destroyed if patients could be taken by police from treatment centers
and placed in criminal court for drug possession. Drug courts allow
addicts to seek treatment under the supervision of a judge rather than
being tried in criminal court.

The governor, attending a campaign forum in Orlando for the
agriculture industry, said he was pleased with the decision because
confidentiality is a fundamental part of treatment.

"Our drug court system is based on the fact that the road to recovery
is a rocky one," Bush said. "If counselors are required to report
every violation, then it makes treatment very difficult to work."

Drug treatment counselors elsewhere said only under rare circumstances
would law enforcement be called in if a patient was found with drugs,
and that it didn't appear that Noelle Bush, the president's niece, was
getting special treatment from the center.

"We confiscate the drugs and dispose of them," said Kermit Dahlen,
president and CEO of the Gordon Recovery Center in Sioux City, Iowa.
"Law enforcement probably wouldn't be called in."

Other drug counselors said a ruling against the Orlando center would
have had a chilling effect on people seeking treatment.

"It's set up to protect the confidentiality of the patients so they
can be focused on treatment and not worried about what they say may
get them in trouble," said Jim Aiello, vice president at Gateway
Rehabilitation Center in Alquippa, Pa.

Noelle Bush was put in a court-ordered rehabilitation program in
February shortly after she was arrested at a pharmacy drive-through
window for allegedly trying to buy the anti-anxiety drug Xanax with a
fraudulent prescription.