RSS FeedCourt officer ordered to apologize
In the latest developments of this bizarre case in Maricopa County, Arizona, Judge Gary Donohue has ruled that detention officer Adam Stoddard acted inappropriately when he removed and photocopied a document from the file of defence attorney Joanne Cuccia. Judge Donohue has ordered Stoddard to apologize, however Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has responded that such an apology is unlikely to happen.
The case began when, during a sentencing hearing, the defendant alerted his attorney to the fact that court officers had removed a document from her file, behind her back while she was making arguments.
Bailiffs behaving badly: Detention Officer Adam Stoddard (officer on the right)
Previously, Stoddard had argued that he was justified in searching the file and removing the document because certain keywords had made him suspicious. It has been revealed that those keywords were “going to”, “steal”, and “money”.
In his ruling, Judge Donohue held that Stoddard had no reasonable justification for believing a crime was taking place. He found:
At issue was also the effect that Stoddard’s argument had on the reputation of defence attorney Cuccia. The Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office had issued multiple public statements in which they claimed to have been on “high alert” because of two incidents where defence attorneys had helped smuggle drugs and other items to their defendant – a member of the Mexican Mafia. Since Cuccia’s defendant was also a documented member of the same organization, Stoddard felt he needed to be on “high alert”.
However, absolutely no evidence has been presented that Cuccia – a ten year member in good standing with the Arizona state bar – has ever committed or been associated with any such wrongdoing. Cuccia was therefore concerned that her professional reputation would be unduly tarnished; she felt she was herself being accused of a crime.
In his ruling, Judge Donohue agreed. He found false suspicion had been cast on Cuccia, and he framed this as the central issue. “This case is not about disobeying a court order. It is about protecting a defence attorney from misbehaviour and harassment by another officer of the court.”
As a result, he ordered that Stoddard would be required to hold a press conference where he would publicly apologize to Cuccia. The press conference is required to take place before Dec. 1, and must contain a “sincere verbal and written apology for invading her defence file and for the damage that his conduct may have caused to her professional reputation.”
The ruling threatens jail time if Stoddard does not apologize, or if Cuccia determines that Stoddard’s apology is insufficient.
Sheriff responds defiantly
Yesterday, however, Maripoca County Sheriff Joe Arpaio sounded defiant, stating that he “stands behind” his officer.
“Superior Court judges do not order my officers to hold press conferences. I decide who holds press conferences and when they are held.”
Whether this issue will be put to rest therefore remains to be seen. Sheriff Arpaio’s statement suggests Stoddard may defy Judge Donohue’s order. As for the original defendant, Antonio Lozano, his sentencing hearing has been pushed back to Dec. 14, and he is now represented by new counsel.
Heat City article on ruling
Original video of Stoddard
The Hidden Dangers of Document Metadata
To follow up on Omar Ha-Redeye‘s post about the ethical challenges of practicing law with new information technology, I received the following interesting excerpt from the CBA newsletter in my email inbox:
Metadata: A cautionary tale
Two lawyers are working together on a contract for a client, using a similar contract prepared for another client and fine-tuning the wording to suit this situation. They have used technology to full advantage, saving the original contract under a new name, tracking changes, and writing comments to each other as the drafts evolved. When the draft is ready, one of the lawyers switches from “Final Showing Mark-up” to “Final”, and sends the document to the client by e-mail.
Imagine their distress when the lawyers find out that the client was able to access the document metadata to learn the name of the other client, read the original document prepared for that client, and see all the changes and comments made.
Not only is this embarrassing, it is a breach of professional ethics.
It’s important to understand that most word processing and other “office suite” programs automatically attach metadata to documents, often without the lawyer’s knowledge. Usually this “automatic” metadata would contain things like: the author’s name; the date the document was last saved; and how much time was spent working on the document.
If the lawyer makes use of commenting or revision tracking features, as described in “cautionary tale” above, the metadata would be rich with all sorts of juicy – and confidential – details that could come to the attention of a client, adversary, or third party. For example, anyone with tech savviness could discover the names of reviewers, the number of revisions, and might even be able to see the hidden reviewers’ comments that do not appear on printed copies of the document.
The CBA’s new “Guidelines for Practicing Ethically with New Information Technologies” recommend that lawyers clear the metadata of their documents before sending them out to the client or adversary, just in case:
Lawyers have an ethical obligation, when transmitting documents electronically, to exercise reasonable care to ensure that clients’ confidential information is not disclosed in the
metadata.There are practices that minimize the creation of metadata, as well as ways to remove the
hidden data before distribution or publication so it is not accessible to people for whom it is
not intended. Before removing metadata, lawyers should ensure that there are no legal
requirements to retain the metadata (e.g. discovery obligations).
The new guidelines provide instructions on how to eliminate hidden data, which can be found in Appendix 2 of the document.
