Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Fourth Amendment

Criminal Law

: Fourth Amendment

MA: The reasonable expectation of privacy in jail calls

By John Wesley Hall, Jr.

The Suffolk County Sheriff refused to produce inmate jail calls in response to a grand jury subpoena. Since there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a jail telephone call, the contempt order is affirmed. (The inmates have no greater state constitutional right.) In re A Grand Jury Subpoena, 2009 Mass. LEXIS 637 (September 11, 2009)*: The sheriff asks us to conclude that the constitutional privacy rights of the pretrial detainee or inmate will not be violated where, in response to a grand jury subpoena, the sheriff provides recordings of the detainee's or inmate's telephone calls to the grand jury. We conclude that, where the sheriff's policy of monitoring and recording detainees' and inmates' telephone calls is preceded by notice to all parties, and further, where the recording and monitoring is justified by legitimate penological interests, no privacy interest exists in the recorded conversations such that they cannot be obtained by a grand jury subpoena...continue to full post

Full post as published by Fourth Amendment on September 15, 2009 (boomark / email).