Suit Seeks to Broaden Jail Legal Access Policy

A local attorney and the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on Monday against Sheriff John Duffy, demanding broader access to legal representation for jail inmates and contending that attempts to document evidence of poor conditions in the county’s jails have been blocked.

The suit, filed in Superior Court by attorney Ellen Geis, seeks to change a sheriff’s policy that prevents attorneys’ assistants from interviewing inmates on civil matters before they formally choose an attorney.

“The sheriff has figured out that there are two ways to keep people from suing the jails,” Geis said in an interview. “One way is to not violate the constitutional rights of the inmates. The other way is to keep lawyers out of the jails. And one way to keep lawyers out of the jails is to keep their assistants out.”

Geis said that the policy hinders the ability of inmates to seek legal help on civil matters unrelated to their criminal charges, such as divorce and child custody issues.

Assistant Sheriff Clifford Powell, who supervises the jails, said the policy to which Geis objects is meant to prevent attorneys from launching “fishing expeditions” inside the jails in search of complainers who might provide grist for a lawsuit.

Geis has been battling the Sheriff’s Department without success since June, 1983, when she first sought permission for two volunteer assistants to meet with inmates who had contacted her or the ACLU seeking help with civil legal problems or to pass along information about poor jail conditions. Since that time, Geis and Duffy’s aides have exchanged 11 letters but have not agreed on the issue.

Geis contends she needs to send assistants to interview the inmates because she cannot respond in person to every complaint and still maintain her private practice. She also argues that it is a violation of inmates’ rights to prevent them from meeting with attorneys’ legitimate assistants.

“We’ve gotten information from criminal defense attorneys to the effect that there are inmates in there who would like to speak to a civil attorney about (jail) conditions,” Geis said. “Whether those complaints are something on which a constitutionally based lawsuit could be filed, I couldn’t say. But certainly we need to talk to those people.”

Geis said she would like to send paralegals, clerks and law students to conduct initial interviews with inmates, the most fruitful of which she could follow up herself.

But the sheriff’s policy, which is in the form of a guideline left open to the interpretation of each jail watch commander, allows visits on civil matters only from assistants for attorneys who have established an attorney-client relationship with the inmate. That policy effectively bans the kind of exploratory interviews Geis says are necessary.

“She would like to have anybody and everybody be able to come in,” Powell said. “We want to make sure no one is soliciting business in the jail.”

But Powell said there may still be room for an agreement with Geis. In an interview Monday, he said that he has no objection to assistants’ visits with specific inmates who have requested the contact.