Legal News

Attorney-client calls recorded at San Diego jail

By Jason Siegel

The San Diego Sheriff's Department stopped recording prisoner phone calls last week after it was discovered that conversations between defense attorneys and clients were also being recorded and made easily accessible to prosecutors.

Sanford Toyen, an attorney for the Sheriff's Department, told the San Diego Union-Tribune that it was an accident.

All calls from jail are recorded and begin with an automated message saying so, unless the call is made to one of 5,000 local attorney phone numbers in the Sheriff's Department's directory.

Apparently the directory didn't cover everyone, allowing prosecutors to have access on their computers to phone calls between defense attorneys and their clients.

While the opportunity was there, it's not clear if prosecutors listened to any of attorney-clients -- let alone how many of those calls were recorded, the Union-Tribune reported. If they did, pissed off defense lawyers say such eavesdropping is a felony with fines up to $5,000 per call.

Full post as published by Legal Pad | LA on June 23, 2008 (boomark / email).