REHAB STAFFERS CAN REJECT QUERIES ON NOELLE BUSH

A Judge Says The Need To Protect A Patient's Privacy Outweighs Police
Interest In How The Governor's Daughter Acquired Crack Cocaine.

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

Circuit Judge Belvin Perry ruled that a federal law protecting a drug
treatment patient's privacy outweighs the interest of the police
officers' 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.

"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 in September when he
said refusing to require the drug rehab staff members 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 Orlando
Sentinel's request.

The State Attorney's Office issued subpoenas for four staff members at
the Center for Drug-Free Living in Orlando after police received a
report from another patient on Sept. 9 that Noelle Bush had been found
with cocaine in her shoe. Investigators also tried to depose a staff
member.

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 courts for drug possession. Drug courts allow
addicts to seek treatment under judicial supervision rather than be
tried in criminal court.

The governor 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. If counselors are required to report every violation,
then it makes treatment very difficult to work," Bush said.

Drug treatment professionals elsewhere said that only under rare
circumstances is law enforcement called in if a patient is found with
drugs and that it didn't appear that Noelle Bush, 25, is getting
special treatment.

A ruling against the Orlando center would have had a chilling effect
on people seeking treatment, said Jim Aiello, vice president at
Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Aliquippa, Pa.

"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," he said.

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

She then was jailed for two days in July after she was found in
possession of a bag of prescription medicine taken from a medicine
cabinet in a nurse's office.