REDWOOD CITY — San Mateo County has agreed to change its in-house electronic mail system for jail inmates to make sure that privileged authorized correspondence is shielded from the prying eyes of correctional officers, after a group of criminal-defense lawyers filed a federal lawsuit, in keeping with courtroom information.
An settlement was reached earlier this month to settle the claims, wherein the county admitted no fault or legal responsibility for the alleged observe however nonetheless promised a choose that it might institute a lawyer registry to automate the exclusion of attorney-client-privileged communications from jail evaluate.
The lawsuit, filed in September on behalf of attorneys Curtis Briggs, Robert Canny and Matthew Murrillo, acknowledged that the county sheriff’s workplace gave no discover or warning that it had the power to look by means of non-public communications between attorneys and inmates.
An preliminary response from the sheriff’s workplace contended that the system “clearly and particularly tells all individuals in custody who use it that it’s not for speaking with attorneys. Additional, all others who use it are clearly knowledgeable that emails could be monitored and will not be non-public.”
Whereas denying any fault, the county has since performed an about-face, pledging within the settlement settlement that it “will use its greatest efforts to implement knowledgeable registration possibility in SEM to allow county incarcerated individuals to speak confidentially with their counsel of document.”
SEM refers to SmartInmate Digital Messaging, a service by Florida-based Good Communications Holding, Inc. which is contracted to function the county jail messaging system by means of 2024.
The settlement additionally features a obligatory joint public assertion from the plaintiffs and defendants that notes that the plaintiffs won’t pursue authorized charges in order that “this settlement doesn’t price taxpayers any cash,” and that the plaintiffs are “grateful for the county’s recognition of the significance and the integrity of the attorney-client relationship for incarcerated individuals and their counsels.”
Aba Jabagchourian, an lawyer who represented the suing attorneys, mentioned he’s glad the courtroom system compelled a decision so rapidly.
“We weren’t there to generate profits. Our level was to get this modification performed instantly,” Jabagchourian mentioned. “They did the precise factor, however they need to have performed it earlier than we needed to file. However then it grew to become public, it bought embarrassing, and so they gave us what we would have liked.”
A message left with the sheriff’s workplace was not instantly returned Friday.
Different grievances among the suing attorneys — in addition to civil rights activists — have with the county’s jail mail system stay unresolved. The Good system was authorized and instituted within the county with little public fanfare, which they attribute to the fog of the pandemic.
What stays in place is a workflow wherein private mail despatched to individuals held in San Mateo County jails should first go to a P.O. Field for Good Communication in Seminole, Florida, the place letters and different paper correspondence is scanned electronically, reviewed for content material, then entered into the system on the jail the place it may be considered with the in-house tablets. The precise paper materials is shredded after 30 days, however digital information are retained for no less than seven years, in keeping with the county’s contract with the seller.
