Two years after Escambia Jail opened, attorneys still struggle to see their clients

It’s been just about two years since inmates began occupying the new Escambia County Jail in June 2021, and local attorneys are continuing to voice their concerns with how difficult it is to meet with their clients.

Bruce Miller, the Escambia County-based public defender for Florida’s First Judicial Circuit, told the News Journal that his attorneys often struggle to see more than a few clients a day, leading to a possible breach of defendants' constitutional rights.

“They planned, designed and built the county jail more in the theme of a correctional facility,” Miller said. “What’s the difference? A correctional facility by definition, mostly by common use and statutorily, is a place where people go when they’ve been sentenced.

“Typically, they have 1,500 to 1,600 inmates on a daily basis in the Escambia County Jail,” Miller added. “Roughly 75% of those are there for pretrial detention, which means they haven’t lost their rights.”

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What are the attorneys’ problems with the Escambia County Jail?

Miller’s biggest concern is the wait times his attorneys face when attempting to see their clients in the correctional facility, saying attorneys often spend hours at the jail just to visit a client for a few minutes.

“They did not build enough rooms for us to go and see people,” Miller said. “There’s only so many rooms available, and sometimes you’ll have bail bondsmen in there, sometimes you’ll have private attorneys in there, and so sometimes we’ll have to wait to get a room and other times they’re scattered throughout the building.

“I think it’s kind of like a perfect storm in the sense that they didn’t build enough rooms, and they didn’t design it properly because they have to escort us to different places in the jail,” he added. “Because of the design, they need more staff at a time when there’s a shortage of labor.”

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One of the more outspoken private defense attorneys, Gene Mitchell, has the same complaints as Miller, telling the county in an email that he can no longer see more than a couple clients on a given day.

“Gone are the days of going to the jail and seeing 15 people in an afternoon,” Mitchell’s email said. “Seeing even one person is now a time-consuming ordeal in the new jail, each floor has one private interview room.”

Both Mitchell and Miller say the current correctional facility does have multiple meeting rooms that allow attorneys and their clients to use audio and video communication software called “GettingOut,” a software owned by ViaPath Technologies, formerly known as Global Tel Link. However, that software brings its own set of problems.

Why can’t attorneys just use “GettingOut” in the Escambia County Jail?

In the same letter to the county, Mitchell noted the software attorneys can use “is poor” and frequently does not work correctly. Miller also said there are times they either cannot see or hear their clients, or their clients cannot hear or see them.

In addition to the problems both attorneys have experienced with the software, Miller says he doesn’t see a point for his attorneys to drive to the jail and use a room dedicated for video communication when the attorney could remain in the office and use the software from his desk, saving the attorney’s time and taxpayer money on agency gas expenses.

“I don’t understand why anyone would do that. It just doesn’t make sense,” Miller said. “I can do it right now. Why would I go to jail when I can do it sitting in my car?

“Now we’ve been put in a position where we have to rely on this audio visitation system,” he added, “and it just doesn’t work.”

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What does Escambia County Jail Director Rich Powell have to say?

William “Rich” Powell became Escambia’s new director of corrections in 2018 after he was a correctional major at the Orange County Corrections Department in Orlando.

Powell declined to comment on the situation and declined an interview with the News Journal; however, the director did tell the News Journal back in 2021 that the new jail was designed with security as its top priority.

"All county jails/corrections facilities serve both pre- and post-trial detention. It is often lost on some that we frequently house inmates from death row or serving a life sentence while returned for judicial hearings," Powell wrote in a text. "Therefore, we take security measures very serious for all that we are charged with detaining."

The new jail was built after the county lost about half of its inmate housing capacity in an April 30, 2014, gas explosion at the former jail and central booking facility. During a severe flood, a gas leak occurred in a jail laundry room and when the gas ignited two inmates were killed, over 100 other inmates were injured and one corrections officer was paralyzed.

After years of splitting inmates between an outdated "main jail" facility, local work camps and housing in surrounding Santa Rosa and Walton counties, construction on the current 840-bed Escambia County Correctional Facility was completed in March 2021 at a cost of about $142 million.

Does the Escambia County Jail setup violate inmates’ constitutional rights?

While the complaints that Mitchell, Miller and Miller’s staff have with the new jail setup sound like “part of the job,” the attorneys say they are worried about their clients’ rights under the U.S. Constitution rather than their own discomfort.

The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution lays out a defendant’s right to “have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence” throughout the duration of the defendant’s case.

Miller referenced U.S Supreme Court case Benjamin v. Fraser from 2001, which found that defense attorneys “routinely faced unpredictable, substantial delays in meeting with clients detained at Department facilities.”

“The court determined that attorneys are forced to wait between 45 minutes and two hours, or even substantially longer, after arriving at a facility to see a client,” the case says. “First, many Department facilities have few counsel rooms relative to the number of detainees housed at the facility. Second, certain detainees may not be moved to counsel rooms without escorts. Third, inmates are generally not brought to counsel rooms during inmate counts, which can delay visits for several hours.”

In a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court case, the court in Maine v. Moulton said, “to deprive a person of counsel during the period prior to trial may be more damaging than denial of counsel during the trial itself.”

This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Escambia Jail inmate attorneys lack of access a 6th Amendment issue