Law Clerk Accused of Giving Prisoner Drugs

A day after a law clerk for the American Civil Liberties Union was arrested on suspicion of trying to smuggle drugs through another inmate to convicted killer Willie Ray Wisely, the Orange County district attorney’s office Thursday filed a motion to have Wisely’s special visitation privileges taken away.

The clerk, released on $25,000 bail, was also named in the motion as having engaged in “mutual sexual touching” with Wisely in a courthouse holding cell two weeks ago, an incident allegedly observed by a deputy marshal peeking through a hole in the plastic wallpaper.

Gail Marie Harrington, 25, a third-year law student who denies the allegations, is permitted under a Superior Court order, along with six other individuals, to have confidential and unmonitored communications with Wisely.

These special privileges would be rescinded under the district attorney’s motion. The motion is to be heard Sept. 4 in Orange County Superior Court.

The ACLU called the charges against Harrington “outrageous” and said the circumstances of the arrest suggest political motivations because Wisely has made a crusade of complaining about conditions at the Orange County Jail.

“It’s completely incomprehensible why they found any basis to charge this poor woman,” said Paul Hoffman, ACLU legal director for Southern California. “It certainly raises questions of what the motivations of these charges were.”

Lt. Richard J. Olson, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department, denied that the arrest involved any “political move.” He described the incident as “an arrest for smuggling narcotics into jail, just as anyone else would be arrested if they were caught.”

Murdered Stepfather

The arrest, along with the motion to modify Wisely’s special visitation rights, was the latest in a long list of tangled legal incidents involving Wisely, who was convicted in 1981 of murder in the death of his stepfather.

Since then, the case has been in the appellate process, and Wisely’s many lawsuits and motions against judges and jail officials have helped keep him in Orange County Jail longer than any previous inmate. He is now the sole occupant of an eight-man cell, where he is surrounded by lawbooks, legal files, his own computer and printer and a TV.

Harrington, a law student at Western State University College of Law, said Thursday that she has worked for Wisely as a clerk for almost two years and called their relationship “strictly professional.”

She described her arrest on drug-smuggling charges as “a complete setup.”

“If they want to frighten me, humiliate me, degrade me and jeapordize my future in law, they’ve succeeded,” she said.

Harrington is accused of passing three grams of cocaine and three grams of marijuana hidden in a thick highlighter pen to Lance Warner, an inmate she was visiting at the jail Monday on behalf of the ACLU. Authorities said they suspect that the drugs were intended to be passed along to Wisely.

No Pen Exchange Seen

According to the Sheriff’s Department arrest report, sheriff’s deputies found no drugs when they searched Warner before the visit. The report states that Harrington was not searched before entering the room, but she says she was.

After the two-minute visit, according to the report, deputies searched the inmate again and found that he was carrying a different highlighter pen than when he entered. Allegedly hidden in the pen were the drugs.

No one, however, saw Harrington and the inmate actually exchange pens, the report said.

Harrington and her attorney, G. David Haigh, retained to defend her against the felony drug charges, said she is always searched during her frequent jail visits as a clerk for Wisely and the ACLU.

Wisely posted the $25,000 bail Wednesday night to free Harrington from custody.

The alleged sexual conduct between the two reportedly occurred July 31 in a room designated for confidential attorney-client consultations. In the report, an Orange County deputy marshal said he saw the two “engage in mutual sexual touching.”

The deputy marshal said he watched the alleged activity through a hole in plastic wallpaper covering a large glass window. He reported that by the time a supervisor arrived, Wisely and Harrington “were just sitting on the bench going over some legal papers.”

Wisely and Harrington denied Thursday that they had had any sexual contact or that they are sexually involved. At the same time, both said that they had become close friends as a result of working together and seeing each other almost every day.

First Time Without Bars

In separate interviews, both contended that the incident in the holding cell was a setup. They said the July 31 meeting was the first time that they had been seated next to each other without bars between them.

“The deputy put us in a tiny room with space for only one bench; we couldn’t sit without touching knees,” Wisely said in a telephone interview from his prison cell. “The deputy is coming around every five minutes pressing his face up against the glass. What are you going to do? Have sex? Excuse me, I’m not an animal.”

In the 15-page motion filed Thursday to modify Wisely’s visitation orders, Deputy Dist.Atty. Burl Estes argued that Wisely no longer needed the special privileges, including 24-hour visiting rights, to prepare his murder defense, and that he was abusing them by having an unnamed clerk smuggle drugs into the jail.

Estes wrote that the “capable assistance” of Wisely’s attorneys, Sheila Williams and Jason Noyes, made the special privileges “no longer reasonably necessary.”

Estes also argued that the visiting orders “created security problems in the jail.” Not only have “illegal drugs been found in his cell, but it appears that one of his law clerks was the source of them,” Estes wrote. “It also appears that his relationship with that particular clerk is far from being professional.”

The motion cites the alleged discovery July 4 of drugs in Wisely’s cell, his July 31 meeting with Harrington, and her meeting on Monday with Warner, the inmate who afterward was allegedly found with drugs hidden in a pen.