I am not one, but would be good to get a lawyer input and someone from SC on this point.
To my recollection, all jail calls are typically monitored and/or recorded. For what purposes, legal measures I am not sure. And could vary by state.
Whether an attorney or their client was to expect or assert privilege on a line of that type is another matter.
I am not saying that it should have been released at this point. Just that there still might be a matter whether or not one as either party on a jail initiated call or line could expect privacy? And whether or not that could also arise to an attorney client privileged call on such a phone system?
MOO
This is all about attorney client privilege. You have a right, a legal right, to attorney client privilege
no matter where you are. You could be talking to your attorney at their office, in your home, in court, at a restaurant, on the phone, even while climbing MT Everest. No matter where you are, what you say to your attorney has to stay private.
This privacy does not go away because you are in jail. In jail, defendants speak to their attorneys in person, on the phone and in video chats, all are private, all fall under attorney client privilege.
No one has the right to listen in or put out your conversation to the media whether by recording or transcript.
My information comes from my personal experience using attorneys and having attorney client privilege. My attorneys always talked about everything staying just between us.
One reason jail phone calls are recorded is for safety and crime reasons, such as inmates conducting other crimes like buying drugs or wanting to get drugs smuggled into the jaill.
Many defendants have been caught on jail recordings making threats against witnesses even trying to hire hits in extreme cases.
There was a case in AK where an inmate - waiting for trial in jail - convinced a relative over the phone to send a bomb through the mail. The inmate wanted revenge on the person who informed on them, the person who was the witness against them. This relative sent the bomb and killed one of the informer's family members.
The jail was sued and the plaintiffs won their case because the jail failed to listen to the recorded phone calls that would have disclosed all the bomb planting, revenge conversations. The inmate tried to talk in code which is why they thought they were safe.
Another reason for taped jail calls is because anything incriminating an inmate says can be used against them in court. If they talk about their case or admit their guilt it can be used against them. Even talking about their trial strategy can be listened to by the prosecution in certain circumstances, as happened in a case I followed.
This only applies when an inmate is talking to people who are not part of the defense team. Defense has investigators and mental health experts and office staff and assistants, etc....working for them and all these conversations are private because they are done on behalf of the attorney working on the defendant's case.
2 Cents