Charlotte County attorney responds to jail report

CHARLOTTE COUNTY, Fla. – For nearly four years confidential conversations between some inmates and their attorneys have been recorded at the Charlotte County Jail. That’s according to a newly released report from the Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.

“1,900 is crazy. It’s absolutely crazy,” said Russell Kirshy, who has been an attorney in Charlotte County for over twenty years.

A report released by the sheriff’s office Friday evening reveals that more than 1,900 conversations between attorneys and their inmate clients could have been recorded while at the county jail. The jail’s computer system show the recordings go back to April of 2011.

So, how’s this gone on that long?

“If you have one conversation with a defendant and he agrees, or she agrees, to take diversion or take probation or something like that, the phone call never gets discovered because there isn’t a lot of litigation going on,” Kirshy added. “I think that that’s the reason why it hasn’t come up until now.”

WINK News discovered all this last week after a motion was filed by the chief public defender in Charlotte County asking a judge to remove the entire State Attorney’s Office from prosecuting the murder case of Dwayne Johnson.

In the report, the sheriff’s office writes that this happened because of computer software problems at the terminals that attorneys use to talk with their clients.

But, Kirshy isn’t buying that because he thinks all the consultations had to have been labeled
by someone, and because five were actually turned over to the prosecutor by people in the sheriff’s office.

“There were actually five conversations that were disseminated, that were actually recorded between the attorney and the client, and sent out,” Kirshy explained.

He expects this to cause chaos in Charlotte County’s criminal justice system.

“There are some clients that have taken significant sentences on cases and if their conversations have been compromised, perhaps those pleas have to be set aside, or those trials – the verdicts have to be set aside,” Kirshy reasoned.

The sheriff’s office says there’s now a double check system to prevent this from occurring in the future. It’s also refused to comment on this entire matter. A hearing is scheduled for later this week.