Douglas County jail recorded calls between some defendants and attorneys for months, lieutenant testifies – The Lawrence Times
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The Douglas County jail was recording phone calls between some defendants and their defense attorneys for several months, a violation of their attorney-client privilege.
Calls between defendants and seven attorneys were recorded from sometime in February through the end of August, according to testimony Thursday.
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The information came to light during a hearing for Derrick Reed, 18, who is charged with first-degree murder in the March 2023 shooting death of 14-year-old Kamarjay Shaw.
Calls between Reed and his defense attorney, Mark Hartman, were among those recorded.
Lt. David Hardy of the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office testified that he’s been working in his current position as an administrative lieutenant over the jail since February. One of his duties is to administer ICSolutions, the inmate calling system the jail uses.
Inmates’ calls from the jail are regularly recorded, and Hardy said some corrections officers routinely “spot check” calls to make sure there are no outgoing or incoming threats to safety or communication about contraband.
To ensure calls with defense attorneys are not recorded, Hardy said, there are boxes that must be checked on contact entries in the ICSolutions system. When it’s done correctly, calls to attorneys’ phone numbers are never recorded, he said.
Hardy said he found seven attorneys’ contact information that he had not input correctly to ensure that calls to and from their clients would not be recorded.
Maya Hodison/Lawrence Times Derrick Reed, left, sits with his defense attorney, Mark Hartman, during a Sept. 14, 2023 hearing in Douglas County District Court.
Prosecutors discovered the issue when victim-witness coordinator Michelle Walter was reviewing calls in Reed’s case on Aug. 30.
Walter said as soon as she realized Reed was speaking to Hartman, she stopped listening to the recording and called Chief Assistant District attorney Jennifer Tatum. She said she recognized Hartman’s voice, but she did not hear any discussion of case strategy.
Each call also includes a prefatory introduction asking the inmate to say their name, and an automated message that a call is being recorded. Walter said she had never heard any other calls between attorneys and clients, so she did not know whether that message was customary in privileged calls.
Hardy said the system showed Walter had listened to 16% of the 12-minute call, which is approximately 115.2 seconds, or less than two minutes.
Hardy said system records showed that three calls with attorneys had been accessed, including on Aug. 30 when Walter accessed the phone call Reed made to Hartman. He said there was another call that a now-former corrections officer had accessed between Reed and Hartman from Aug. 19. The hearing ran out of time before Hardy could discuss the third call.
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Once calls are marked as privileged in the system, Hardy said, he is unable to see the calls’ full history. Walter also said she was unable to download the recording to provide it to Hartman during their meeting about an hour later because she was already locked out of the call.
The Douglas County Sheriff’s Office did not immediately respond Thursday to further questions we asked including how they’ve notified defense attorneys whose calls were recorded, who the seven attorneys were and how many attorney-client calls were recorded. This article will be updated if possible.
Reddit comments
Hartman also brought to the judge’s attention some comments on a Reddit post that he had determined to have come from someone in the district attorney’s office.
Someone posted a link to the Lawrence Times article about Pokorny’s decision in July to allow prosecutors to charge Reed as an adult. One user had commented that the practice of trying kids as adults was abhorrent; another user replied in comments that have since been deleted saying that Reed was going to turn 18 in the next several days, and calling him a “kid” was a stretch, among other comments.
Hartman said the user who responded in favor of prosecution as an adult — a username of “classy-motherf – – – – – ,” — was a prosecutor in the DA’s office, though not any of the attorneys working on Reed’s case. Deputy DA Joshua Seiden agreed and said the user was not Tatum, Leal or himself, and said they had handled the matter internally.
Hartman said at this time he wasn’t asking the judge to do anything about that, but he needed to do more research on it.
The hearing will continue at 10 a.m. Monday, Sept. 18. The case is set for trial starting Nov. 27.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison (at) lawrencekstimes (dot) com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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Mackenzie Clark/Lawrence Times
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