OLYMPIA — Jail inmates’ phone calls to loved ones aren’t private and the state can listen in and use the recordings against them, the state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.
In its 7-2 ruling, the high court said that Desmond Modica had no reasonable expectation of privacy while making phone calls to his grandmother from King County jail.
Modica was arrested in 2005 for striking his wife in the face, and he called his grandmother almost every day and enlisted her help in getting his wife to not appear in court. Signs near the telephones, and automated messages on the phone, warned that the calls would be recorded.
Those calls were used against Modica in King County Superior Court, and he was convicted of assault, resisting arrest and tampering with a witness. The Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. Modica asked the high court to review the trial court’s admission of the recordings of the conversations with his grandmother and asked that the recordings be prohibited and that his tampering conviction be thrown out.
The majority, led by Justice Tom Chambers, affirmed the Court of Appeals, and said that inmates had a reduced expectation of privacy, noting that both Modica and his grandmother knew they were being recorded and that someone might listen to those recordings — emphasized by the sign they saw as well as the automated system’s warning.
“What is more, Modica and his grandmother were recorded discussing the fact that their calls were being recorded,” Chambers wrote. “Whatever expectation of privacy they had, it was not reasonable.”
The majority emphasized that they were not ruling that a conversation wasn’t private just because participants know it will be recorded or intercepted.
“Intercepting or recording telephone calls violates the privacy act except under narrow circumstances, and we will generally presume that conversations between two parties are intended to be private,” the court wrote. “Signs or automated recordings that calls may be recorded or monitored do not, in themselves, defeat a reasonable expectation of privacy.”
However, because Modica was in jail and because he wasn’t talking to his lawyer, “we conclude he had no reasonable expectation of privacy.”
Chambers was joined by Justices Susan Owens, Charles Johnson, Mary Fairhurst, Barbara Madsen, James Johnson and Debra Stephens.
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