The Orange County jail’s telephone vendor apparently recorded 21,645 more attorney-client calls than the company initially acknowledged and continued recording after it said it had stopped in 2018, according to a court motion Tuesday.
Court papers filed by Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders say that phone vendor GTL — which acknowledged nearly 34,000 breached recordings ending in 2018 — continued recording attorney-client calls into 2019. Emails included in Sanders’ motion indicate Orange County Sheriff’s Department personnel knew of the continued recordings and were concerned.
In an earlier statement, the department said it did not know of the new recordings. Sheriff’s officials declined comment Tuesday.
More than 300 of the extra recordings were accessed and listened to, Sanders said Tuesday.
“As will become increasingly clear, even after the phone scandal, nothing has been truly fixed or changed,” he said in his motion.
Included in the latest recordings is at least one call made by inmate Ryan Franks to his attorney in a car theft case to which he has pleaded guilty. Franks is attempting in court to take back his plea under Sanders’ defense.
GTL’s attorney, Adil Khan, wrote in a court reply that Sanders’ allegation was “a fanciful conspiracy theory that has no relevance to the proceedings.”
Kimberly Edds, a spokeswoman for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, added that the agency “completely supports any inquiry that leads to a legitimate finding that inmate calls were illegally recorded. However, the information provided in GTL’s motion shows thus far that the arguments being made by the Public Defender’s Office are nothing more than sound and fury signifying nothing.”
Authorities first learned in June 2018 that the phone system had been recording calls between inmates and their attorneys because of “human error.” In all, 4,356 conversations were recorded because the lawyers’ phone numbers were mistakenly left off a “do-not-record” list. Another 29,456 unanswered calls also were recorded, said GTL spokesman James Lee, in an earlier interview.
GTL assured the Sheriff’s Department in 2018 that the problem had been resolved.
Now Sanders has obtained, through the court, emails and other documents between GTL and the Sheriff’s Department showing that the breach has continued.
Sanders said the documentation showed that 20 calls made by inmates to defense attorney Rudy Loewenstein, were recorded. Fourteen of those recordings were listened it, Sanders wrote. Loewenstein, in an interview Tuesday, said he had put his name on the “do not record” list and was not informed of the recordings until Tuesday morning by Sanders.
“I’m outraged,” Loewenstein said. “After everything the Sheriff’s Department and district attorney have gone through, to think they would continue to violate the clients’ rights …”
The sanctity of conversations between attorneys and their clients is one of the most powerful legal tenets in the United States.
An Orange County grand jury found no evidence that criminal cases were affected by the recorded attorney-client calls.
Posted by: https://anaheimsigns.com
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