EDITORIAL
Courts still confuse AA with being a 'religion'

A federal appeals court in New York last week upheld the conviction of a man in the grisly slaying of two doctors in their home, finding it was fair to convict him of using his confessions to fellow Alcoholics Anonymous members.

The defendant, Paul Cox, was convicted of two counts of manslaughter in the 1988 stabbing deaths. The crime went unsolved for four years. In 1990, he joined Alcoholics Anonymous.

After becoming sober, he increasingly suffered from vivid, anxiety-ridden dreams in which he experienced flashbacks, allowing him to recall that he had killed the couple.

Cox confessed to no fewer than seven AA members, including a prospective roommate who, on her psychiatrist's advice, told local police what Cox had told her. He was arrested after police matched his palm print to one taken at the scene of the killings.

An appeals judge last year concluded that the conversations were a form of confidential religious communication, privileged exactly as a confession to a priest would be, and reversed the conviction.

This interpretation was unfortunate; Alcoholics Anonymous doesn't claim any such privilege, and a careful reading of its literature makes clear that AA is not religious.

But when the conviction was finally upheld last week, the federal appeals court sidestepped the question of whether AA is "a religion," ruling that even if it is, Cox hadn't clearly sought spiritual help in unburdening himself to AA members.

The case presents a disturbing threat to AA and similar groups, and is one on which right-thinking individuals disagree. Some believe AA communications should be privileged, to avoid a "chilling effect" on the process of recovery.

But others realize that if AA is to be construed as a religion, it presents an immediate problem for judges, probation officers, treatment counselors and the like, who commonly require troubled people in their care to attend AA meetings.

At some of the more than 300 AA meetings held each week on O'ahu, literally dozens of the attendees are there not from choice, but because some outside agency ordered them there. A legal finding that AA is a "religion" means those agencies would have nowhere to send their clients.

Not all of these clients get the AA message and improve their lives. But some do. A Hawai'i court finding that AA is a "religion" thus would be a tragic mistake.