Clerk at Erie County Courthouse charged in wiretapping case, accused of secret taping

A now-former clerk at the Erie County Courthouse who had already been suing her boss has been charged with felony offenses that she secretly taped her co-workers at the county Clerk of Courts office.

The defendant, Karla Jeffery, 60, voluntarily retired from her $37,713-a-year job in the Clerk of Courts office on Oct. 4, the day after detectives with the Erie County District Attorney's Office started investigating the wiretapping allegations, according to county records.

Jeffery is accused of using a small hidden digital video recorder to take audio of her co-workers on Oct. 3, and she is accused of using her cellphone to record a co-worker assisting a customer at the Clerk of Courts office on Oct. 2, according to the charging documents.

Jeffery is accused of making the recordings without the consent of the six co-workers the detectives said she taped. Pennsylvania law requires both parties to consent to having their conversations recorded.

She is charged with the third-degree felonies of illegal interception of communications and criminal use of a communications facility and the first-degree misdemeanor of possession of an instrument of crime.

Jeffery was charged Oct. 27 and arraigned that day before Erie 3rd Ward District Judge Tom Carney. She is free an unsecured bond of $50,000, according to court records. Her preliminary hearing is scheduled for Nov. 20 before Carney.

Concerns reported to DA's Office spur probe

The detectives got involved after a supervisor in the Clerk of Records office reported to the District Attorney's Office on Oct. 3 that workers in the Clerk of Courts office "had just found a recording device attached to a bag under the desk of Karla Jeffery, and it was still there and believed to be actively recording," according to the affidavit of probable cause attached to the criminal complaint.

The records do not name the supervisor in the Clerk of Records office who reported Jeffery. The Clerk of Records office oversees the county row offices that handle public records, including the Clerk of Courts office, which deals with criminal records.

County Clerk of Records Aubrea Hagerty-Haynes, who was Jeffery's ultimate boss at the courthouse, declined to comment. Jeffery did not respond to a telephone message seeking comment.

Election loss leads to lawsuit against Jeffery's boss

The charging documents in the taping case do not allege a motive, though Jeffery's dissatisfaction with the Clerk of Records and Clerk of Courts offices is a matter of public record.

Jeffery unsuccessfully ran against Hagerty-Haynes for the clerk of records post in the Democratic primary in 2021. She then sued in federal court in Erie in March.

The suit is against Erie County, Hagerty-Haynes and county Recorder of Deeds David Bradford, a row-office supervisor who also works under Hagerty-Haynes. Jeffery is claiming the defendants created a hostile work environment for her, discriminated against her and violated her First Amendment right to free speech. She also claims Hagerty-Haynes and Bradford demoted her after the 2021 election.

Hagerty-Haynes and Bradford "demoted and disciplined the Plaintiff because of her speech as a citizen on matters of public concern, and because of her decision to run for office, in violation of her rights to free speech and to petition the government," according to the suit.

The suit also claims that the defendants discriminated against Jeffery because of her age. She had worked at the courthouse since 2002 and worked as a senior criminal records clerk at the Clerk of Courts office since 2006, according to the suit. But after the 2021 election, the suit claims, Jeffery was "demoted from job assignments she had held for some time as a senior employee, to assignments that amounted to those of a new hire employee. The Plaintiff was also advised that any additional issues would result in her immediate termination."

"Recent hires have all been in their 20s to the best of the Plaintiff's understanding," the suit also claims. "The Plaintiff believes she is being driven from the Clerk of Courts as a result of her political speech and activity, and her age."

The suit is pending before U.S. District Judge Susan Paradise Baxter. The defendants filed a motion to dismiss the suit in August, and the lawyer for Jeffery responded in September.

The lawyer for the county, Hagerty-Haynes and Bradford is arguing the lawsuit is deficient because it does not adequately make a claim under the law. The defendants are also denying the claims.

Jeffery's "effort to turn her personal dispute with the way Hagerty-Haynes runs the Clerk of Records office into a legal claim fails as a matter of law because it does not establish any violation of her employee rights," the lawyer for the defendants, Jay Habas, said in the motion to dismiss. "The charges of discrimination, constitutional infringement and a hostile work environment ... are no more than an attempt to challenge Hagerty-Haynes, and implicate the other Defendants, Erie County and David Bradford, in a way that Plaintiff could not in the electoral process."

Jeffery's lawyer, Sean A. Casey, of Pittsburgh, wants the suit to go forward. In his response to the defendants, he said the suit has established "a plausible cause of action for hostile work environment. Plaintiff has asserted that the Defendants demoted, demeaned, excluded, humiliated and otherwise treated her in a hostile fashion."

Unclear is how the criminal case against Jeffery will affect the federal case. Jeffery in the lawsuit had sought an injunction to stop what she claimed was the violation of her rights at the courthouse. That request would appear to be moot now that Jeffery retired from her job.

Videos, recordings found on devices, detective says

In the criminal case, the Erie County detective who led the investigation, Kevin Calkins, said in the affidavit of probable cause that he found 13 videos on the recording device. The videos were 10 minutes long and "included oral communications" from five employees in the Clerk of Courts office "without their knowledge or consent."

On Jeffery's cellphone, according to the affidavit, Calkins found a 20-second video recording, which included audio, from Oct. 2. That recording included "oral communications of a Clerk of Courts co-worker as she was speaking with a customer at the front window, without their knowledge or consent," according to the affidavit.

Calkins said he examined the devices after getting the report from the supervisor in the Clerk of Records office and after talking to an employee in the Clerk of Courts office, both on Oct. 3. The employee, Calkins said in the affidavit, said she saw "a recording device under Karla Jeffery's desk with a red light blinking from the device. The victim said this made her uncomfortable based on the events she witnessed the day before."

On Oct. 2, the employee said, she saw Jeffery at her desk and holding up her phone while the woman was helping a customer at the front counter, according to the affidavit. The woman, according to the affidavit, told Calkins she saw "a little red bubble" on the camera, "signaling that the device was actively recording."

Wiretapping case latest criminal case against courthouse staffer

The criminal case against Jeffery is the second this year in which an employee at the Erie County Courthouse was charged with illegal activity toward her co-workers.

Jennifer A. Prichard, the secretary to the court administrator to the Erie County Court of Common Pleas, pleaded guilty Sept. 28 to harassing six of her female courthouse co-workers by mailing them a total of 72 anonymous and threatening letters over nearly five years, ending when she resigned from her courthouse job a year ago. She also sent an anonymous and threatening text to the husband of one of the women. The offenses were misdemeanors.

Another courthouse case: Ex-secretary at Erie County Courthouse sentenced for harassing her female co-workers

Prichard, 55, was sentenced immediately after she pleaded guilty. She was ordered to serve a minimum of two years in the Erie County Prison and a year of probation. Her maximum sentence is a year minus a day. The subtraction of a day allows Prichard to serve the sentence at the Erie County Prison rather than state prison, where inmates serve sentences of two years or more.

Some of the anonymous letters were related to Prichard having an affair at the time with an Erie County deputy sheriff who no longer works for the county, according to testimony at the sentencing.

Prichard was concerned that some of the women were romantically involved with the deputy, and she sent letters to the women to try to keep them away from the deputy — though the women had nothing to do with him, according to testimony.

Contact Ed Palattella at epalattella@timesnews.com. Follow him on X @ETNpalattella.

This article originally appeared on Erie Times-News: Erie County Courthouse clerk charged with secretly taping co-workers