Months after the COVID-19 pandemic ended in-person legal visits at Manhattan's Metropolitan Correctional Center and Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center, videoconferences with attorneys are still only available to a few inmates each day—a situation the Federal Defenders of New York described as "plainly insufficient" in a letter filed late Wednesday.

Assistant U.S. attorneys Seth Eichenholtz and Sean Greene, who represent the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said in a separate letter Wednesday that the facilities undertook a "herculean effort" to maintain legal access for inmates amid the pandemic.

About four 30-minute videoconferences are available each day at the MCC, according to Eichenholtz and Greene. About four videoconferences per day are also available for MDC inmates, but about half of those calls require the inmate's attorney to go to the federal courthouse in Brooklyn to participate.

Sean Hecker of Kaplan Hecker & Fink, who is representing the Federal Defenders, wrote in Wednesday's letter that at least 10 videoconferences of at least one hour will soon be required at each facility each day, as the courts continue to rebound from the initial adjustment to the pandemic and hold more substantive proceedings.

"Rather than continue to defer meaningful contact with clients in the hope that there will be a sudden change in the public health situation, we think it makes sense to develop a system now that will enable the building of attorney-client relationships and the review of discovery, to the extent possible," he wrote.

Hecker called on the BOP to propose a "concrete plan" to expand video access at both facilities. As more attorneys are appointed to new cases, they have to try to establish new relationships with clients and cannot do so through brief and rare calls, he wrote.

"We recognize that this will require an investment of resources by the MDC and MCC," he wrote. "But, without this, there is simply no way to review discovery with a client. Nor can one prepare a client to testify at a preliminary hearing or plead guilty. And that's assuming that the attorney has already forged enough of a relationship with the client prior to the pandemic to be able to engage in such substantive discussions."

Federal Defenders in other areas have reported that their clients can review discovery on iPads during videoconferences, Hecker wrote. Even on Rikers Island, which has reported far more cases of COVID-19 than the MDC or MCC, Hecker said videoconferences seem to be "relatively easy" to schedule on Skype and also seem to be longer, by default, than the MDC and MCC's 30-minute conferences.

While many more telephone calls are placed each week than video calls, "overflow" call requests have also been a recurring issue at both facilities, according to court papers.

A telephone status conference is set for Friday morning before U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie of the Eastern District of New York.

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