Judges approve plan to revise jail's phone monitoring system

<p>A panel of Clarke County judges has approved of Sheriff Ira Edwards' plan to change a phone system at the county jail that had allowed authorities to listen in on privileged conversations between inmates and their lawyers.</p><p>Clarke County Superior Court Judge Lawton Stephens said Monday that he and two other judges were satisfied that Edwards had complied with their June 18 order. The judges had told the sheriff to disable a function in the jail's phone system that allowed prosecutors and police to illegally monitor conversations between inmates and attorneys.</p><p>"The sheriff has told us that remote access (to privileged conversations) that had been previously available has been eliminated," Stephens said.</p><p>As part of their approval of the sheriff's plan, the judges included a requirement that inmates be allowed to make toll-free calls to their lawyers.</p><p>All jails monitor phones for security reasons. But the phone system at the Clarke County jail, which was installed in February, allowed remote access from the district attorney's office. Any prosecutor could hear recorded conversations of inmates simply by logging onto a computer. They could even listen to live conversations.</p><p>The monitoring system came to light in June when defense attorney Jeffrey A. Rothman asked that client Christopher Wade's case be dismissed after he learned that a prosecutor and a police detective had used the phone system to listen in on Wade and his then-attorney, Adrian Patrick, as they discussed trial strategy.</p><p>The motion for dismissal was denied, but Superior Court Judge David Sweat said he was disturbed to know the phone system allowed such eavesdropping. The three judges later signed an order demanding that the sheriff's office remedy the system.</p><p>Wade, who had been charged in a home invasion case, was later acquitted.</p><p>Edwards sent the judges a letter June 30 telling them revisions to the phone system had already begun. The judges wrote back Friday, telling him they approved of his plan.</p><p>"We applaud your sound decision to prohibit access to the recording system to the District Attorney's Office and the Athens-Clarke County police department," the judges wrote. "While the monitoring and recording system my serve a legitimate safety purpose at the jail, eavesdropping by anyone on conversations between inmates and their counsel could be an abuse of the process."</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x28666e4)</p>