2nd Attorney Accuses Newport Police of Listening to Confidential Jail Talks

A second lawyer has alleged that employees at the Newport Beach Jail secretly listened to his confidential conversation with a client.

Mark Goldstein said he was in the middle of a telephone conversation with a client who had been arrested on bad check charges when he heard static and background noises.

“Then I heard another voice,” said Goldstein, adding that he was shocked. “I said that I wanted to talk to my client in a confidential manner. The voice said, ‘No, you can’t’ ,” Goldstein said.

Goldstein, with offices in Newport Beach and Los Angeles, said he protested at the time, April 13, 1987, and later in a series of letters to Newport Beach police.

“I was irate,” Goldstein said. “The police are trying to take unfair advantage of conversations they know to be confidential.”

Police Broke Law, Attorney Alleges

Last month, Los Angeles attorney Barry Tarlow alleged that Newport Beach police broke state law in tape-recording his telephone conversation with an inmate who had been arrested on federal mail fraud charges. State law makes it a felony to record conversations between criminal defendants and their attorneys at jails without consent.

An investigation of the incident has been urged by Tarlow, county public defenders and Vernon W. Hunt Jr., president of the Orange County Bar Assn.

In a letter to Dist. Atty. Cecil Hicks, Hunt called for “an immediate investigation by your office” or a grand jury. Hunt asked whether the practice of monitoring conversations exists at any penal facility in Orange County.

“This practice, if it exists, would appear to be a very serious invasion of the attorney-client privilege,” Hunt wrote. Hicks responded by informing Hunt that an investigation would take place.

Investigators from Hicks’ office have interviewed jail employees. Local prosecutors could not be reached for comment.

Robert H. Burnham, Newport Beach city attorney, said an inquiry into Tarlow’s complaint concluded that nothing wrong was done. Because Tarlow’s client ignored signs alerting inmates to the availability of private lines for confidential conversations and talked on a speaker phone in an open area near jailers, Burnham said, he believes no law was violated.

Burnham said the tape of the conversation makes it “very clear” that neither the lawyer nor the client had any expectation of privacy. Tarlow cautioned the client several times that the conversation might be overheard, according to Burnham.

But the criticism has led to a new review of jail procedures to ensure confidentiality of attorney-client conversations, Burnham said.

Tarlow’s complaint “has made us aware that maybe some improvements can be made,” Burnham said. “The city has no intention of violating any attorney-client conversations. We are looking into procedures and practices to make sure there’s as much privacy as possible.”

People detained or arrested cannot be given complete freedom to use a phone, Burnham said. Jailers need some control to avoid calls to “Paris or Madrid.”

Incident Called “an Outrage”

Burnham said he was not familiar with Goldstein’s complaint. But Goldstein said he “wrote numerous lengthy and very clear letters pointing out the problem.” The “whole thing is an outrage,” he said.

Despite his contention that jailers did nothing wrong, Burnham said that “we are going to look at everything and do whatever we can do to give arrestees and their attorneys total and complete confidentiality.”