MA: The reasonable expectation of privacy in jail calls

The Suffolk County Sheriff refused to produce inmate jail calls in response to a grand jury subpoena. Since there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in a jail telephone call, the contempt order is affirmed. (The inmates have no greater state constitutional right.) In re A Grand Jury Subpoena, 454 Mass. 685, 912 N.E.2d 970 (2009)*:

The sheriff asks us to conclude that the constitutional privacy rights of the pretrial detainee or inmate will not be violated where, in response to a grand jury subpoena, the sheriff provides recordings of the detainee’s or inmate’s telephone calls to the grand jury. We conclude that, where the sheriff’s policy of monitoring and recording detainees’ and inmates’ telephone calls is preceded by notice to all parties, and further, where the recording and monitoring is justified by legitimate penological interests, no privacy interest exists in the recorded conversations such that they cannot be obtained by a grand jury subpoena.

The exclusionary rule was not applied to a stop outside an officer’s territorial jurisdiction to give a warning. After the defendant was stopped, it was apparent he was DWI. Delker v. State, 2009 Miss. App. LEXIS 597 (September 11, 2009).*

Defendant’s stop for an expired license led to finding an outstanding warrant. The attention of the police was drawn because Wal-Mart called to tell the police that defendant had bought a huge number of matches. The odor of meth was coming from the car. The stop and arrest were valid, without regard to the smell. Neither the driver nor the passenger had a license, so the vehicle was going to be towed. Defendant produced the matches before the search. Wade v. State, 2009 Ark. App. LEXIS 690 (September 2, 2009).*