When Corey Hebert’s lawyer got here to see him on the Aroostook County Jail, they sat head to head. But the 2 males knew they’d little privateness to talk freely, stated Hebert, who was jailed in 2019 for allegedly trafficking medication.
His court-appointed lawyer, John Tebbetts, suggested him to talk softly so their dialog wouldn’t be heard by the guards posted close by.
“However after we talked over the telephone we had been extra free as a result of these calls — we had been instructed — weren’t imagined to be recorded,” Hebert stated. “And right here we’re discovering out that they’re.”
On these calls, Hebert remembers speaking together with his lawyer about plea gives from the district lawyer’s workplace to settle his case and methods to get a greater deal. His drug trafficking cost would finally be dismissed.
Now, Hebert stated he’s left feeling betrayed and with a “lump within the abdomen” after studying that regulation enforcement personnel in Aroostook County elected to “playback” — or hearken to — recordings of greater than a dozen telephone calls between him and Tebbetts earlier than he was launched from jail.
Between June 2019 and Might 2020, the Aroostook County Jail recorded 622 calls that defendants made to twenty attorneys, together with Tebbetts, in keeping with data obtained by The Maine Monitor. It’s the largest mass recording of attorney-client telephone calls in a Maine jail disclosed up to now.
Jailers can legally report and hearken to telephone calls of individuals of their custody — and regularly do — however are explicitly barred by state regulation from interfering with lawyer calls. These attorney-client calls are imagined to be declared non-public and out of the attain of regulation enforcement investigators. Federal courts have stated that defendants have a constitutionally protected proper to hunt confidential authorized recommendation to develop a protection for trial.
Aroostook County is an instance of the worst that may occur when jails report telephone calls to attorneys, a Maine Monitor investigation discovered, and the calls to lawyer Tebbetts notably stand out. Aroostook recorded 304 calls to Tebbetts’ regulation workplace from 49 jailed purchasers in a 12 months, greater than every other lawyer within the county, data present. Forty calls had been from Hebert.
In Aroostook County, a variety of regulation enforcement officers routinely had entry to recordings of Tebbetts’ shopper calls with out his information or consent, in keeping with knowledge from the sheriff’s workplace.
The information present that generally regulation enforcement personnel elected to “playback” these recordings. That time period — playback — is essential to understanding the recording system. It means “the decision was listened to by the person with the identify beside it,” in keeping with Aroostook County Sheriff Shawn Gillen.
Securus Applied sciences put in the telephone system in Aroostook and 13 different Maine county jails. Joshua Martin, the then common counsel for the corporate, supplied an analogous definition of the time period “playback,’’ whereas testifying in 2018 as a part of a federal lawsuit in Kansas.
“Playback, which is simply that, somebody listening to the decision,” Martin stated.
The identical time period “playback” seems in data Aroostook County supplied to Tebbetts and that The Maine Monitor reviewed. Usernames of jail directors, county staff and even a U.S. Customs and Border Safety agent assigned to the Maine drug enforcement process power seem repeatedly with the “playback” of 58 recordings and the “obtain” of 17 extra recordings of calls jailed defendants made to Tebbetts, in keeping with data Tebbetts obtained from the sheriff’s workplace in August 2020.
“I used to be not notified by any of those those who they’d listened to my telephone calls or downloaded my telephone calls,” Tebbetts stated.
The information don’t element why any of the customers apparently chosen the “playback” possibility or how lengthy they listened to the recording. The county denied a number of requests by The Maine Monitor to interview county staff who used the system.
Knowledge present that the identical particular person customers repeatedly chosen “playback’’ on calls to Tebbetts’ telephone quantity. Calls with the identical jailed shopper on completely different days had been generally listened to by the identical person. Every time, Tebbetts wasn’t instructed.
“God assist us in the event that they had been deliberately attempting to hearken to my telephone calls,” Tebbetts stated.
The main points involving Tebbetts’ calls are the newest revelations in a months-long investigation by The Maine Monitor, which beforehand reported that Aroostook, Androscoggin, Franklin and Kennebec county jails recorded almost 1,000 calls jailed defendants made to their attorneys between June 2019 and Might 2020. Cellphone calls between Tebbetts and his purchasers are amongst these recordings.
The “playback” and “obtain” of calls to Tebbetts reveal one other layer of issues with how Maine county jails have operated their inmate telephone programs.
Securus, the Texas-based firm that gives jail telecom providers to just about all of Maine’s county jails, beforehand settled lawsuits with out admitting fault in California, Texas and Missouri. The fits had been introduced by legal professionals alleging the corporate unlawfully recorded conversations with their jailed purchasers.
In Maine, authorities have been placed on discover that attorney-client calls had been being recorded and, in some jurisdictions, investigators had been ordered to cease straight accessing recordings via the jails.
For instance, The Maine Monitor discovered that three brokers assigned to a statewide drug process power in Aroostook County recognized recordings of attorneys throughout their investigations. One agent was reportedly instructed by his superiors “to cease listening and delete the recorded name” if he believed it was with an lawyer, an electronic mail from August 2020 reveals. A month later, brokers statewide had been ordered to get out of the jails’ telephone programs fully.
Aroostook County defined that recordings had been made as a result of Tebbetts and his purchasers didn’t present the jail his telephone quantity to placed on a “don’t report” checklist. Tebbetts stated he believes he supplied his regulation agency’s telephone quantity to members of the sheriff’s workplace when he opened his rural regulation observe in 2018, however he has no report of it. It’s the identical telephone quantity that was recorded and listened to by the jail, knowledge present.
He disagrees with the sheriff that it was his or his purchasers’ fault that the jail recorded a whole lot of confidential calls and regulation enforcement personnel listened to dozens of these recordings. Tebbetts stated there was no clear course of to exempt his telephone quantity from being recorded, and he didn’t obtain a letter from the sheriff after his purchasers’ calls had been listened to with directions on the best way to make it cease.
Securus added a whole lot of protection attorneys’ telephone numbers in Might 2020 and once more in Might 2022 to Maine jails’ telephone programs to dam new recordings in response to considerations from state officers.
In Tebbetts’ circumstances, the defendants on the calls with him had been being prosecuted by the native district lawyer or state lawyer common’s workplace. State and native prosecutors insist they don’t have a observe of listening to lawyer calls.
District Lawyer Todd Collins, in an announcement late final 12 months, stated his workplace in Aroostook County “has not knowingly used privileged communications between a defendant and his / her lawyer in a prosecution.”
If his workplace “had been to return into possession of privileged communications,” the courtroom has a course of to evaluation it, he stated. Collins didn’t reply to a later request for remark.
Table of Contents
How the system works
Many U.S. jails report all calls, and non-attorney calls are routinely listened to by regulation enforcement in legal investigations.
Fourteen of the 15 Maine county jails contract with Securus Applied sciences of Carrollton, Texas, for inmate telephone providers. As soon as a name is recorded, it lives on Securus’ on-line name platform. There, regulation enforcement can save, burn CDs, obtain and playback recordings.
Securus has not responded to a number of questions from The Maine Monitor about how its system operates. The Maine Monitor as an alternative reviewed dozens of telephone contracts, bid paperwork, courtroom data, on-line movies and privateness insurance policies, and spoke with legal professionals and police to grasp the decision platform.
To guard their calls, attorneys are imagined to request that their telephone quantity be made “non-public” in order that they aren’t additionally recorded by the jails’ telephone programs.
The contract signed by the Aroostook County Jail with Securus Applied sciences says that for lawyer and clergy calls, the jail has the “sole discretion, authority and duty for designating numbers as non-public.” The corporate could make telephone numbers non-public, however solely when instructed to by the jail.
Tebbetts and his jailed purchasers had good purpose to consider their calls had been non-public. The handbook given to each inmate on the jail stated, “All calls besides to attorneys will likely be monitored and recorded.”
That turned out to not be correct.
Aroostook County Sheriff Gillen “discovered of the chance that inmate telephone calls with attorneys had been being recorded” for the primary time on Might 7, 2020, in an electronic mail from a county insurance coverage supplier, in keeping with a written assertion. The following day he instructed the jail administrator to take away all however three staff from accessing recordings. Gillen stated he instructed them to additionally survey reserving info and block recordings of any lawyer telephone numbers not already within the jail’s telephone system.
Securus Applied sciences inside per week put all identified lawyer telephone numbers from Maine on an inventory to not be recorded, and the corporate added to the Aroostook County Jail’s reserving course of a approach for inmates to supply their attorneys’ identify and telephone quantity, on the county’s request, Gillen wrote.
Aroostook County officers insisted they hadn’t deliberately recorded or monitored any lawyer calls on the jail. Gillen stated since Might 2020, the jail has blocked entry to calls with attorneys whose telephone numbers jail officers may establish.
“The underside line is that nobody at Aroostook has ever deliberately monitored, listened to or recorded any name that they knew to be privileged. The one time that attorney-inmate calls had been recorded or monitored was when the lawyer failed to supply his or her phone quantity to the jail in order that it could possibly be notated by the corporate offering inmate phone providers as ‘don’t report,’” county lawyer Peter Marchesi wrote on Might 17, 2022.
A daily jail customer
As a Presque Isle-based lawyer, Tebbetts is an everyday on the Aroostook County Jail in downtown Houlton. A brief drive off Interstate 95, the place miles of pine bushes give technique to farm fields, Houlton is a burst of exercise alongside the border of the Canadian province of New Brunswick.
The jail — established in 1889 — attaches to the again of the district courthouse and overlooks the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Workplace, Houlton United Methodist Church and a park the place individuals collect in heat climate to eat at picnic tables throughout the early afternoon.
The drive between Tebbetts’ regulation workplace and the jail in Houlton takes underneath an hour. He’s there so typically that guards wave him into the constructing, the place he often spends a number of hours visiting with purchasers.
When purchasers in jail name his regulation workplace it’s typically his receptionist, Tabitha Haines, who picks up. The caller ID reveals it’s a name from Securus they usually’ve discovered to acknowledge the extension for every county jail, he stated.
“Tebbetts Regulation Workplace,” is usually how she begins a dialog when a brand new particular person calls.
Earlier this 12 months, The Maine Monitor revealed the primary articles in a seamless investigation exhibiting how six Maine county jails recorded lawyer calls and shared a few of these calls with police and prosecutors. Recordings of those conversations continued to be downloaded and performed by investigators via August 2021, data obtained by The Maine Monitor reveal.
Tebbetts filed a federal lawsuit in August 2020 accusing Securus Applied sciences of allegedly “wiretapping” attorneys and their jailed purchasers. Legal professionals employed to signify the corporate vehemently denied the declare and argued that even when the calls had been recorded, there was no assure that the conversations had been privileged and due to this fact protected.
In the identical 12 months the lawsuit was filed, Aroostook County Sheriff Gillen revoked entry to the jail’s recordings to all however just a few staff — amongst them Help Sgt. Shanna Morrison. Gillen put Morrison in control of reviewing and fulfilling future requests for recordings of inmates’ jail calls, he stated in an interview.
Data submitted within the lawsuit checklist Morrison as taking part in again — or, as Gillen describes, listening — to 1 defendant’s name to Tebbetts in October 2019.
Morrison directed questions on her work to Jail Administrator Craig Clossey, who declined to remark. Knowledge present that Clossey additionally performed again three calls one other jailed shopper made to Tebbetts in December 2019. Neither Morrison nor Clossey was named as a defendant within the lawsuit.
On the time, Gillen stated limiting entry was sufficient of a repair. “It simply cleans it up so it’s not willy-nilly,” he stated in an interview with the Monitor in October 2020. After repeated requests for an in-person interview, Gillen responded to among the information group’s questions with a five-page letter on June 9 of this 12 months.
“There could very properly have been calls that had been monitored, listened to, or recorded, but it surely was by no means performed deliberately with the information that the calls had been privileged,” Gillen wrote.
“Right here is the underside line. Neither I nor anybody on the County has any curiosity in realizing what legal defendants are speaking about with their legal professionals,” he added.
Whether or not Aroostook County staff supposed to pay attention to those calls or not, it has doubtless stymied communication between many legal professionals and jailed purchasers in Maine, stated Zach Heiden, the chief counsel of the ACLU of Maine.
“It doesn’t matter whether or not any person is listening in on these conversations by accident or on objective. It’s going to have that very same chilling impact,” Heiden stated. “We wish individuals to have the ability to talk robustly and freely with their legal professionals in order that their legal professionals can present significant recommendation and advocacy. With out that confidential communication, there can’t be a lawyer-client relationship and the Structure requires the state to guarantee that there’s that relationship.”
Gillen’s efforts to restrict who may entry the jail’s recordings in 2020 got here too late for Hebert. County data present between October 2019 and March 2020, earlier than the sheriff restricted entry to the jail’s recordings, extra county staff repeatedly listened to recordings of calls Hebert made to his lawyer.
Jailed on drug fees
Hebert’s world was spiraling uncontrolled in September 2019 when his second spouse known as police to their residence. After his multiple-year first marriage fell aside, he started ingesting and utilizing cocaine earlier than turning to methamphetamines, he stated.
When a brand new girl got here into his life, he bought sober and baptized into the church once more, he stated. However their marital bliss quickly ended. He was quickly again on medication and his new spouse instructed Maine State Police that he was dealing, courtroom data present.
“I used to be an addict they usually had been attempting to pin me, deem me as a drug vendor and a drug trafficker,” Hebert stated.
When Hebert arrived on the Aroostook County Jail that September, he signed a paper acknowledging his telephone calls can be recorded and monitored, he stated. The one exception was imagined to be calls together with his lawyer, in keeping with the inmate handbook he was given. The directions had been clear, “All calls besides to attorneys will likely be monitored and recorded.”
Hebert known as Tebbetts dozens of occasions from his cell block, data present. He was unaware that their calls had been being recorded.
One county worker listened to 10 recordings of Tebbetts and Hebert’s calls between Feb. 4 and March 16, 2020, together with on days main as much as Hebert’s launch on bail. The identical worker additionally listened to 26 calls from different defendants to Tebbetts, knowledge present.
In August 2020, a decide dominated state police carried out an unlawful search of Hebert’s truck and the district lawyer’s workplace dismissed drug trafficking fees that had been filed in opposition to him. Across the similar time, Tebbetts discovered in regards to the trove of his telephone calls with purchasers that had been recorded by the jail. As a result of the fees had been dropped in opposition to Hebert, they didn’t problem the fees based mostly on the recordings.
“It was my ‘Break Glass in Case of Emergency’ card and I didn’t have to make use of it,” Tebbetts stated.
For a 12 months, Hebert was held on home arrest. Within the remaining months of probation in late 2021, Hebert had put his life again on observe. He has began a profitable trucking enterprise and is sober.
Pissed off and confused
One other prisoner on the Aroostook County Jail, Harley Simon, had violated his probation from a manslaughter conviction stemming from a 2005 accident when he drove off the highway, killing the front-seat passenger in his automotive. Whereas Simon was awaiting a possible trial on new fees in spring 2020 and weighing whether or not to simply accept a plea deal from the district lawyer’s workplace, jail data present, a county worker listened to 2 of Simon’s calls together with his lawyer, Tebbetts.
Simon served a part of a 3½-year sentence on the Bolduc Correctional Facility, a minimal safety state jail in Warren. He’s now on probation.
Throughout a go to from a Maine Monitor reporter on the jail, Simon stated he was pissed off and confused by the information that a few of his conversations with Tebbetts could have been heard by somebody aside from his lawyer.
“There have been private issues that I talked about with John [Tebbetts] and I didn’t even wish to share with lots of people,” Simon stated. “They had been conversations, for positive, that I needed to clarify to him what hell I’ve been via within the final 16 years.”
Simon has been out and in of jail for probation violations that embody altering addresses with out permission, driving and not using a license and utilizing medication that he was hooked on.
Simon blames his household for his repeat violations and substance use. He additionally stated he blames the jails for not getting him medical therapy he wanted for his addictions.
In an interview on the jail in 2021, Simon clutched a bit of paper with an excerpt of the decision knowledge that the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Workplace had given Tebbetts and that The Maine Monitor had compiled from the data. It listed the occasions and dates of calls together with his lawyer {that a} county worker had listened to, knowledge present.
He grew to become clearly upset when he learn the small print. He remembers the calls vividly. He and Tebbetts mentioned new fees and the attainable jail time he was dealing with, he stated. The calls had been skilled and about his case, Simon stated.
Monitoring calls between inmates and their family and friends will not be unusual. Regulation enforcement hearken to the recordings for particulars that the inmates could inform family and friends that would assist them prosecute the case. Officers say in addition they want to observe for contraband or threats to witnesses.
“All non-privileged inmate calls are recorded, could also be monitored, could also be performed again, and could also be used for regulation enforcement functions. All inmates are conscious of this,” Gillen wrote.
Nevertheless, calls to attorneys are off-limits for recording. Jail employees don’t have any technique to know if a name is between an lawyer and shopper if the telephone quantity isn’t registered as “non-public,” in keeping with Gillen.
But, 58 calls that jailed purchasers made to Tebbetts had been performed again — or listened to — in keeping with knowledge turned over by the Aroostook County Sheriff’s Workplace. Regulation enforcement personnel didn’t contact Tebbetts about these recordings.
It’s “troubling” that the staff apparently didn’t report the lawyer name recordings to their supervisors or the protection legal professionals, stated Corene Kendrick, deputy director of the ACLU Nationwide Jail Challenge, which focuses on prisoners’ constitutional rights. “It reveals a surprising lack of coaching.”
A identified drawback
Drug regulation enforcement personnel working in Aroostook County additionally discovered recordings of attorney-client calls in some circumstances they had been investigating, in keeping with data and interviews.
The Maine Drug Enforcement Company agreed to a request by The Maine Monitor final 12 months to survey brokers and ask them in the event that they had been conscious of “privileged jail calls’’ being present in any investigations or associated legal prosecutions. The survey revealed that brokers had been certainly conscious of some recorded calls between attorneys and their jailed purchasers.
Three state drug enforcement brokers assigned to Aroostook County instructed supervisors they knew attorney-client calls had been recognized in investigations or legal prosecutions, Assistant Lawyer Common John Risler, who coordinates drug enforcement, instructed The Maine Monitor.
The brokers who stated they knew of these privileged calls had been Particular Agent Forrest Dudley, Supervisory Particular Agent Peter Johnson and U.S. Customs and Border Safety Agent John Gaddis, Risler wrote in an electronic mail.
Ten calls to Tebbetts from his jailed purchasers in 2019 and 2020 on the Aroostook County Jail had been downloaded by the username “jgaddis” and an extra name from 2019 was downloaded by a “fdudley,” county knowledge present.
When calls between Tebbetts and purchasers on the Aroostook County Jail had been downloaded, “the decision was downloaded and both saved to a disc or a pc,” in keeping with Gillen.
When requested to substantiate the names of those that downloaded the calls, Gillen stated in an electronic mail to The Maine Monitor in November that, “It might be secure to say they [Gaddis and Dudley] had entry for drug investigations, contemplating they labored for MDEA [Maine Drug Enforcement Agency] on the time.” Different officers wouldn’t verify the names of the brokers who had entry to Tebbetts’ calls.
The jail has deleted all details about the customers and it can’t be recovered, Gillen instructed The Maine Monitor.
Tebbetts stated he wasn’t instructed who had downloaded his purchasers’ calls earlier than the data had been deleted.
When Tebbetts requested county officers what had occurred to the recordings of him and his purchasers, Sheriff Gillen wrote in an August 2020 electronic mail, “I spoke to Agent Gaddis and he acknowledged that when he requested telephone calls from a particular inmate, he was instructed in the event you come throughout a telephone name between an inmate [and] their lawyer to cease listening and delete the recorded name. He acknowledged that’s what he did.”
Roy McKinney, the Maine Drug Enforcement Company’s director, blamed the jails’ phone suppliers for recording attorneys and sending these calls to brokers throughout investigations. He stated the brokers did nothing mistaken.
“In any occasion the place it grew to become evident that an inmate was speaking with their lawyer, the agent stopped listening to the recording instantly,” McKinney wrote in an announcement to The Maine Monitor. An investigation performed with assist from a prosecutor’s workplace decided not one of the brokers had “operated outdoors of their moral duties.”
Nonetheless, the Maine Drug Enforcement Company had sufficient concern to make sweeping adjustments in September 2020 shortly after Tebbetts filed his lawsuit. All drug enforcement brokers statewide had been instructed to instantly cease accessing any of the county jail telephone programs. All requests for jail calls should now be made in writing and despatched via state electronic mail, in keeping with an agency-wide memo. If an agent discovers an lawyer name, they need to report it to a supervisor and commander, in addition to the jail and case prosecutor.
Tebbetts stated he has no purpose to consider the Aroostook County Jail continues to report his telephone calls. Aroostook County has but to reply to The Maine Monitor’s request for added knowledge for 2020 and 2021.
“To my information, and this has been verified by Securus, no telephone calls between inmates and their attorneys have been recorded, downloaded, or performed again since Might 7, 2020” in Aroostook County, Gillen wrote.
On the lookout for solutions
Tebbetts tried instantly in summer time 2020 to get solutions about what occurred to his telephone calls. Two different protection attorneys and two purchasers joined him in submitting a category motion lawsuit in opposition to Securus Applied sciences.
The grievance was dismissed in November 2021 by Chief Choose Jon Levy of the U.S. District Court docket District of Maine. Levy dominated that the legal professionals hadn’t proven that the corporate deliberately singled out the Maine legal professionals’ calls to report.
The case was dismissed with out prejudice, that means the attorneys can refile the grievance in the event that they receive extra particular details about their recorded calls.
“It’s definitely truthful to assume that Securus possesses some info (or, alternatively, a significant absence of data) which may help the Plaintiffs in assessing whether or not Securus knew that it was systemically recording attorney-client calls,” Levy wrote.
With out the lawsuit, Tebbetts stated he sees no approach now to search out out what regulation enforcement could have gleaned from his calls.
“This job is tough sufficient to do as it’s, and to have that degree of privateness that’s obligatory, be shattered — it’s persevering with to play a job in my circumstances the place it’s slowing down resolutions of circumstances,” Tebbetts stated. “It’s only a nightmare. A few of my purchasers are refusing to speak on the telephone with me even immediately.”
This reporting was supported by the Worldwide Ladies’s Media Basis’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Ladies Journalists. Preliminary funding for this venture was supplied by The Pulitzer Middle. The venture can also be supported by Report for America and Investigative Enhancing Corps.
This story was initially revealed by The Maine Monitor. The Maine Monitor is a neighborhood journalism product revealed by The Maine Middle for Public Curiosity Reporting, a nonpartisan and nonprofit civic information group.
