Federal Defenders Say Glitches With Legal Calls at NYC's Federal Lockups Persist, Despite Progress
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partner Loretta Lynch, who is mediating the case in the Eastern District of New York, said both facilities fulfilled most of their call requests this week, but issues with privacy and scheduling continue.
May 08, 2020 at 12:22 PM
3 minute read
Attorneys representing inmates at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center and Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center said during a status conference Friday that problems with legal calls continue at the facilities, despite weeks of conversations about how to improve the situation.
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partner Loretta Lynch, who is mediating the case in the Eastern District of New York, said both facilities fulfilled most of their call requests this week, but issues with privacy and scheduling continue, particularly at the MDC.
Deirdre von Dornum, attorney-in-charge of the Federal Defenders for the Eastern District of New York, said inmates need headphones so that they're not participating in videoconferences "on speakerphone," along with private spaces to make the calls away from roommates and officers. One inmate reported that he had to call his lawyer from the kitchen, she said.
"We're still just at a baseline of not enough calls [and] issues with the officers, just weird things like you need to be trained to say you can't give a legal call in the kitchen," von Dornum said.
Attorneys representing the Bureau of Prisons said that not all the reports of unusual activity related to calls have been substantiated, but substantiated reports have been handled quickly. Officers have been repeatedly reminded of the requirements surrounding legal calls, they said.
U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie acknowledged that the facilities are trying to resolve the issues, but she questioned why training was necessary on such basic matters.
"No guard should be surprised, or not know, that they're supposed to provide privacy for counsel calls," she said.
Von Dornum said "wildly unpredictable" scheduling is also a problem. The Federal Defenders have been granted a block of time each afternoon for calls at each facility, but specific times for each call aren't provided.
Most calls end up coming outside the afternoon block and sometimes first thing in the morning, forcing attorneys to scramble to clear their schedules on short notice, she said.
"I still struggle understanding why court conferences can be scheduled at a particular time but legal calls cannot," she said.
Brodie said the facilities may need to open up additional blocks of time for calls if requests exceed their current capacity.
She scheduled another status conference May 15, despite a request from the Bureau of Prisons attorneys to reduce the frequency of conferences to every other week.
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