What follows is an El Paso Times article titled ‘Attorney’s concerned that booths are bugged’ published today April 17, 2010 on the front page of the El Paso Times. I spoke to Times reporter Adriana Gomez Licon before 3:00 p.m. yesterday. The article has some serious errors that I will address at the end. Please read.
County jail: Attorneys concerned that visitation booths are bugged

By Adriana Gómez Licón \ El Paso Times
Posted: 04/17/2010 12:00:00 AM MDT

EL PASO — Lawyers say they are worried that telephones at the county jail’s visitation booths could be bugged, creating a possible government intrusion on privileged conversations with their clients.
But El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said Friday that no recording or monitoring occurred during visits to the jail by lawyers. He agreed to allow a full examination of the booths after county and federal public defenders said they wanted to investigate the sheriff’s system.
Wiles said the visitation booths have no capability to record conversations and he has no desire to listen to what jailed clients are saying to their attorneys.
“I want the defense attorneys to have confidence that when they are speaking to their clients they can do so without fear of being recorded,” he said.
Maureen Franco, who heads the federal public defender’s office, said she still thought an independent inspection of the jail was a good idea.
“I think we believe him, but we will verify,”she said.
Franco said she planned to ask her bosses in San Antonio for approval to hire a surveillance expert to inspect the jail. She said federal and county public defenders would share the cost.
“We are the ones who are most affected because we have the majority of the cases,” she said.
Jesus Olivas, an attorney in private practice, said he began to feel uneasy a few weeks ago about the jail being bugged.
Olivas said he heard from sources he would not disclose that privileged conversations
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were being taped. Talks between a lawyer and his client are protected under the law and are supposed to be confidential.
“If somebody is listening, it’s really dangerous,” Olivas said.
Olivas confronted Wiles and told him he heard that visitation booths at the jail were bugged. Wiles was evasive, Olivas said.
“When I asked the sheriff, the answers were weird. That left me wondering,” Olivas said.
After Wiles invited public defenders and bar associations to have technology experts examine the telephone booths, Olivas said he felt better.
“If the sheriff is going to go on record, there’s nothing we can be concerned about,” he said. “I know the sheriff is a good guy, and I trust his word.”
Even so, Olivas said, he did not want to continue meeting clients at the jail. He said he planned to file motions to move the location of meetings with jailed clients.
Defense attorney Theresa Caballero said she already took that step. She said she filed a motion Thursday that would mandate that her client in a murder case be taken from the jail to a courthouse room for conversations with her. Her motion had not posted on the courthouse records system Friday.
Caballero represents 20-year-old Phillip Bobby Berryman, charged in the fatal shooting of a Chapin High School student in November. He faces two counts of engaging in organized criminal activity-murder.
“I cannot confer with him openly knowing or having the belief that the attorneys’ booths are being bugged,” Caballero said.
Caballero said Olivas, the public defender’s staff and a source at the county jail have offered credible concerns of recording being done in jailhouse conversations.
“I consider it a piece of solid information, and I need to act upon it,” she said.
In a famous case in the 1980s, the FBI secretly recorded conversations between an El Paso lawyer and his brother, also his client, at a federal prison in Leavenworth, Kan.
The tapes became critical prosecution evidence in the 1979 murder of U.S. District Judge John Wood Jr. of San Antonio.
A judge ruled the tapes could be used as evidence because the lawyer, Joe Chagra, was indicted as a conspirator in the murder. Chagra pleaded guilty to conspiracy in 1982.
Adriana Gómez Licón may be reached at agomez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6129.

First error: The paragraph about the Joe Chagra/Judge John Wood, Jr. case was my quote. Adriana Gomez Licon knew nothing about the case until she called me. I told her that the bugging of a jail had occurred before and that there was a famous case where an attorney went to federal prison based on conversations he had with a client at a jail. She asked for the name of the case, etc., and I gave it to her. In her article, Gomez Licon mentions the Chagra case as though it came from her brain instead of attributing the quote to me. (False attributions or no attributions are a problem at the Times. In a February 2010 Times story, Reporter David Montero attributed his quote to me and in today’s Times story, Reporter Gomez attributes my quote to herself).

Second error: I never told Gomez that “… a source at the county jail have offered credible concerns…” I have not spoken to anyone at the county jail, I have no sources at the county jail and I have never claimed to. I told Gomez Licon that an attorney from the Federal Public Defender’s office said that they have a solid source at the county jail who has told them about the bugging. There is a big difference.

Third error: The article begins with lawyers are worried that phones at the attorneys booths are being bugged. I never said that. I said I was worried that the BOOTHS were being bugged. That is also what attorney Jesus Olivas was quoted as being worried about. Again there is a big difference, especially if there is going to be a sweep. It’s not just the phones, it’s the entirety of the booths.

Fourth problem: I told Gomez Licon that I had filed, the day before, a motion on behalf of my client Phillip Berryman. Gomez Licon writes that my motion had not posted on the Clerk’s website as of the day after. If Gomez Licon was checking on my motion, why didn’t she do what a reporter is supposed to do and go to the primary source which in this case would be the counter of the Clerk’s office where they would have provided her with a copy of my motion file stamped on Thursday, April 15, 2010 at 1:33 p.m? Gomez Licon claims to be checking but she never left the comfort of her desk.

Gomez Licon also left out that attorney Jesus Olivas is a commissioner on the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office Civil Service Commission.

Who knows what else is wrong with the story.