E-mail on affair with boy disputed: (is email to 'minister' confidential?)

[rainbow4321]

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0313confession13.html


Korri Waters was in big trouble and wanted to cleanse her soul.
She e-mailed a woman at the church she used to attend, a woman she addressed as "minister," and asked if she could come back to the congregation.

Waters laid it out in another e-mail, every graphic detail. That e-mail ended up in the hands of prosecutors and was used as evidence to convict Waters of having sex with a 16-year-old boy.

Now she is looking for deliverance from the Arizona Supreme Court, claiming that her "confession" should not have been allowed as evidence.

Under Arizona law, what is discussed between priest and penitent is supposed to be as sacrosanct as what is said between husband and wife, attorney and client, doctor and patient. But what if the minister is not ordained? And what if the church doctrine doesn't include confession to its pastor?

[Dogmudgeon]

1. A new DU Pedo Frenzy in ten ... nine ... eight ...

--p!

[Robb]

2. We've got a sheriff's deputy in this county

...who's also a minister. Talk about yer balancing act.

BUT he's always the one to point out the religious end of things, evidenc-wise, is almost always trumped by the "protect and serve" stuff, by state law.

I would expect the law in AZ regarding the secrecy of the confessional booth doesn't trump the laws regarding statutory rape... aren't such things usually ranked by class? :shrug:

If so, it wouldn't matter if the guy was ordained, or how the church doctrine sits.

[Festivito]

3. What is disturbing, is how did the officials get the email.

If given by the recipient, then, buyer beware. She bought the minister idea from a minister who is not worthy.

If retrieved off the minister's or her computer then a judge should have signed off on access to the property.

If given by the Internet Service Providers at either end, again a judge should have given access to the property.

If a curious lurker was looking about and found an unprotected location that should have been protected by the owner. Here is a responsibility claim. Back to an unprofessional minister or a foolish sender. But, this is akin to peeping into windows. Illegal because we make special laws to make peeping illegal. Although when one walks up to a door with a window and our neighbor does not answer, we mean to look in for the neighbor's own good. Then peeping is good, go figure. Still the thougt that someone can just look into your private windows waiting to find something they like is still disturbing and shold not be allowed.

If monitored by intermediate Internet Protocal hoat computers, this is disturbing. Who is monitoring and why. This could be for robbing people. This should not be allowed either.

We seem to lose our privacy to moral issues: drugs and sexuality. Cell phones are not protected because some drug dealer's cell phone was overheard on a TV set, therefore none of us has a right to privacy on a cell phone. Rediculous.

If you know someone is dealing, get a warrant for the invasion of privacy. If you do not know, then what's the problem?