Kscoinhutch wrote:
What happens in this situation? What would you lawyers do if this
happened to you?
A man is in a county jail awaiting trial on a low-level felony. He is
also charged with harrassing a policemans's daughter. One day he is taken
to court for a pre-trial hearing. While in court, his court-appointed
attorney allows him to "borrow" several pages from the lawyer's case file
to take back to the jail and read in order to assist the lawyer, with
strict instructions to return the papers to the lawyer at the next court
hearing. A couple days later, jailers enter the defendant's cell and
seize the legal papers in front of numerous witnesses. The jailers later
throw the legal papers away, and a jailer who personally knows the
defendant tells the defendant of this. The defendant's attorney soon
afterwards withdraws from the case for an unrelated reason, and a new
attorney is appointed. As a lawyer, what would you do in this situation?
I am not an attorney but I'll take a stab at this anyway.
First, I would go to the original attorney and ask if he had a copy of what
was "stolen".
Any good attorney would not give such papers to his client without first
making copies, or at best, giving the client the copies.
Is there any criminal act by the jailers? That would depend on the state's
laws.
At the trial, I would ask that the jailers be brought in for some
questioning, if only to find out if some misconduct of another person was in
the works or not.
