People v. Torres

240 N.E.3d 528

2024 IL 129289

The PEOPLE of the State of Illinois, Appellee,

v.Ramon TORRES, Appellant.

(Docket No. 129289)

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Filed March 21, 2024

Appeal from the Appellate Court for the First District; heard in that court on appeal from the Circuit Court of Cook Coun- ty, the Hon. William Raines, Judge, presiding.

James E. Chadd, State Appellate Defender, Douglas R. Hoff, Deputy Defender, and Deepa Punjabi, Assistant Appellate Defender, of the Office of the State Appellate Defender, of Chicago, for appellant.

Kwame Raoul, Attorney General, of Springfield (Jane Elinor Notz, Solicitor General, and Katherine M. Doersch and Eldad Z. Malamuth, Assistant Attorneys General, of Chicago, of counsel), for the People.

OPINION

JUSTICE OVERSTREET delivered the judgment of the court, with opinion.

¶ 1 In this appeal we are asked to interpret the physician-patient privilege statute set out in section 8-802 of the Code of Civil Procedure (735 ILCS 5/8-802 (West 2018)). A Cook County jury found defendant, Ramon Torres, guilty of predatory criminal sexual assault of his four-year-old daughter. The State’s evidence included testimony that defendant tested positive for chlamydia in 2013 and again in 2016. On appeal, defendant maintains that his trial counsel was constitutionally ineffective for failing to object to the admission of evidence of these two test results. Defendant argues that the tests results fell under the purview of the physician-patient privilege statute and that none of the statutory exceptions to the physician-patient privilege applied. Defendant, therefore, argues that the test results would have been excluded from evidence at his jury trial had his attorney objected. The appellate court disagreed and affirmed defendant’s conviction and sentence. For the following reasons, we affirm the lower courts’ judgments.

¶ 2 I. BACKGROUND

¶ 3 In December 2016, the State charged defendant with one count of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child (720 ILCS 5/11-1.40(a)(1) (West 2012)). The child, J.T., is defendant’s daughter, who was born on April 6, 2009. The State’s indictment alleged that defendant made contact between his penis and J.T.’s sex organ sometime during the period from March 1, 2012, to November 30, 2013.

¶ 4 The following facts leading up to the indictment were established by evidence presented at defendant’s jury trial. J.T. initially lived with both defendant and her mother, Jasmine T., until mid-2012 when defendant and Jasmine separated. After the separation, defendant moved to Chicago and lived with his cousin, Vanessa. J.T. visited defendant at Vanessa’s house every other weekend.

¶ 5 On November 23, 2013, Jasmine first became aware that something had happened to J.T. when J.T. told Jasmine that she could not use the bathroom because her "private area" hurt. J.T. was four years old at this time. Jasmine took J.T. to the emergency room, and J.T. tested positive for chlamydia. The Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) told Jasmine that both she and defendant had to be tested for chlamydia. Jasmine submitted to testing within a few days and tested negative.

¶ 6 Defendant did not submit to testing along with Jasmine. Instead, the day after Jasmine took J.T. to the emergency room, defendant also went to the emergency room by himself complaining of symptoms that were consistent with having a sexually transmitted disease (STD), including a stinging sensation when he urinated. Healthcare providers at the emergency room tested defendant for chlamydia for purposes of treating his symptoms. Defendant’s test results were positive for chla- mydia, and he received medication to treat his symptoms.

¶ 7 On December 2, 2013, Jasmine took J.T. to a child advocacy center for a forensic interview. J.T. stated during the interview that her six-year-old cousin, J., had done something to her. She did not disclose that anyone else had abused her.

¶ 8 Approximately two weeks later, Jasmine asked defendant if he had been tested for chlamydia, and he stated that he had not been tested. He did not inform Jasmine that he tested positive for chlamydia from his emergency room visit. DCFS and police investigators were also unaware of defendant’s chlamydia test result. Because J.T. did not name any possible offenders other than her six-year-old cousin and investigators did not have any other leads, they suspended the investigation. Therefore, by the end of 2013, no one had been charged with any offense against J.T., and according to Jasmine, DCFS had informed her that defendant had tested negative for chlamydia. Jasmine and defendant subsequently reconciled and resumed living together with J.T. and their other children.

¶ 9 In October 2016, Jasmine took J.T. to her pediatrician for a routine physical, and J.T. again tested positive for chlamydia. Therefore, DCFS again ordered both defendant and Jasmine to be tested for chlamydia. Because DCFS ordered them to do so, both defendant and Jasmine submitted to testing the next day, and they both tested positive for chlamydia. The nurse practitioner who was treating J.T., Susana Guzman, reviewed defendant’s medical history and discovered that he had tested positive for chlamydia in 2013. Guzman notified DCFS of this discovery.

¶ 10 A forensic interviewer conducted a second interview with J.T. on October 18, 2016. During this interview, J.T. did not disclose anyone as a possible abuser but again said her cousin, J., had touched her. At the conclusion of the interview, the police investigator told Jasmine to call if any new information became available. A short time after this second forensic interview, Jasmine asked J.T. to tell her what happened. J.T. then told Jasmine that, while she visited defendant at Vanessa’s house, defendant put his private part in her private part while she was sleeping.

¶ 11 Jasmine immediately went to the police and filed a sexual assault report, and a forensic interviewer conducted another interview of J.T. on October 24, 2016. During this third interview, J.T. reported that during a visit with defendant at Vanessa’s house, while J.T. was sleeping in a bed she shared with defendant, she woke up when defendant put his private part in her private part. J.T. explained that she previously did not say what defendant did because she had been afraid of getting in trouble. She was no longer afraid because she had told Jasmine what happened and was not in trouble for it.

¶ 12 The police investigator assigned to J.T.’s case requested J.T.’s past medical records, and a nurse informed the investigator about defendant’s 2013 positive test result for chlamydia. The investigator then filed grand jury subpoenas for defendant’s medical records, and defendant was arrested after the investigator received the records, which included defendant’s 2013 chlamydia test results.

¶ 13 After defendant's arrest, defendant agreed to be interviewed by the investigators. During the interview, defendant informed them about an incident that occurred one night when he was living at Vanessa’s house and J.T. was staying overnight with him. Defendant was frustrated because a couple of girls were supposed to come over that night but they did not show up. Defendant stated that he was drinking and "made a mistake." He explained that, while J.T. was sleeping, he removed her clothes, took out his penis, and rubbed it on her vagina for a couple of minutes. He stated that he stopped because he realized what he was doing was wrong and J.T. woke up. Defendant told the investigators that he later told J.T. that he was sorry and that it would never happen again. During this interview, defendant admitted to testing positive for chlamydia in 2013 and 2016. Defendant denied abusing J.T. in 2016 and claimed that he did not know how J.T. got chlamydia a second time in 2016. He denied giving J.T. chlamydia again in 2016.

¶ 14 Defendant told the investigators that, when he tested positive for chlamydia in 2013, he received the testing because he had gone to the hospital for medical treatment. He stated that he tested again in 2016 because DCFS and J.T.’s medical providers told the family that everyone in JT.’s home had to be tested.

¶ 15 Defendant’s jury trial began on July 8, 2019. He was tried in absentia when he failed to appear in court for the trial. At the jury trial, the State presented testimony from Jasmine, J.T., medical personnel who treated J.T. in 2013 and in 2016, medical personnel who treated defendant’s chlamydia in 2013, and the investigators who interviewed J.T. and defendant. The State also presented portions of video recordings of the interviews of J.T. and defendant.

¶ 16 The State’s evidence included testimony of defendant’s positive test results for chlamydia in 2013 and 2016. Although defendant was tried in absentia, he was represented by counsel, and defendant’s trial counsel did not object to the admission of evidence concerning the 2013 and 2016 positive tests results for chlamydia.

¶ 17 At the conclusion of the trial, the jury found defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child, and the circuit court sentenced defendant, in absentia, to 55 years of imprisonment. Authorities arrested defendant more than a year later, and defendant then appealed his conviction.

¶ 18 On appeal, defendant argued that his trial counsel provided him ineffective assistance because the attorney failed to challenge the admission of defendant’s 2013 and 2016 positive test results for chlamydia. 2022 IL App (1st) 210990-U, ¶ 46, 2022 WL 17730028. Defendant argued that the test results were protected from disclosure by the physician-patient privilege statute. Specifically, the physician-patient privilege statute provides that "[n]o physician or surgeon shall be permitted to disclose any information he or she may have acquired in attending any patient in a professional character, necessary to enable him or her professionally to...