Apr 20, 2023 5 min read

A Peters Township attorney is suing Washington County’s prison board, its jail warden and a telecommunications contractor over claims that private phone conversations he had with three incarcerated clients were inadvertently recorded, with some of the tapes allegedly being accessed by prosecutors.

Jeffrey Wertz filed the lawsuit Monday in Washington Count Court of Common Pleas accusing the jail’s staff and its phone operator of recording audio from 139 calls in 2021 and 2022 despite him supposedly being authorized to have private discussions with his clients at the jail.

In his lawsuit, Wertz claimed he went through the proper procedures to have his cellphone number registered with the jail’s Texas-based telecommunications contractor, Inmate Calling Solutions LLC, so any phone conversations would be shielded from being recorded while he was speaking with his clients. All jail phone conversations are recorded, although there is supposed to be a mechanism in place to block that from happening when there are private discussions between jailed clients and their attorneys.

But a few weeks after Wertz registered through the company’s pre-paid phone account, he learned it was not yet activated and still needed final approval from the jail’s staff with proof that he is a licensed attorney.

“I took great pains in the complaint to go through the steps I took to register my (phone) number as an attorney, because that’s been denied and contested in the past year that I didn’t tell anyone I was an attorney, which is ludicrous,” Wertz said during a phone interview Tuesday. “I don’t know what else I could’ve done. I did everything they asked me to do.”

Wertz said he emailed jail Warden Jeffery Fewell on June 7, 2021, and asked him to approve his account. According to an email attached to the lawsuit, Fewell responded that Wertz was now approved and would only need to supply the jail with a copy of his driver’s license and his attorney Pennsylvania Bar Card information.

A week later, Wertz contacted his client, Patrick M. Hughey, who was jailed on a charge of receiving stolen property, to which he later pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 11 ½ to 23 months in jail. Wertz and Hughey spoke 73 times on the phone, which the lawsuit alleges all were recorded.

In November 2021, Wertz said he began representing Kylie Lynn Wilt, who is being held at the jail without bond on homicide charges in connection with the death of her young son after the child’s body was found earlier that month inside the wall of the woman’s Charleroi apartment. She and the boy’s father, Alan Wayne Hollis, are still awaiting trial in the case and could face the death penalty if convicted of first-degree murder. Wertz alleges in the lawsuit three of his phone conversations with Wilt were recorded through the end of the year, although he no longer represents her in the case.

The final situation involved his conversations with Russell W. Jolliffe Sr., who was arrested in June 2021 and charged with raping a young child over several years. Wertz said 63 phone calls between him and Jolliffe were recorded, which he learned about when it appeared in discovery information from prosecutors while Jolliffe. Wertz is no longer representing Jolliffe, who is still awaiting trial.

In all, Wertz said 139 calls with the three clients were recorded, although he’s unsure how many from Hughey and Wilt are in possession of the district attorney’s office.

Wertz moved last June to disqualify the district attorney’s office from the Jolliffe case, which was denied by President Judge John DiSalle and confirmed by the state Supreme Court. He also filed a Right-To-Know request with the county to see what records the district attorney’s office possesses, but the state Office of Open Records dismissed his appeal in October on grounds that it was “incomplete” because he did not provide all of the required information in his filing, according to a final determination posted on the agency’s website.

Washington County District Attorney Jason Walsh said his office has no control in how the jail handles phone conversations or what recordings are turned over to prosecutors.

“The commonwealth is obligated to turn over whatever we have (to defense attorneys through discovery), and we turned everything over,” Walsh said. “We don’t have anything to do with recordings in the jail or other things.”

During the county commissioners agenda meeting Wednesday morning, solicitor Jana Grimm asked the board for a closed-door executive session meeting to discuss the Wertz lawsuit. Both Fewell and Grimm declined comment before a subsequent prison board meeting later Wednesday morning.

However, Washington County Commissioner Diana Irey Vaughan, who chairs the prison board, denied the allegations in a brief phone interview Wednesday afternoon.

“All policies and procedures were followed. There is no wrong-doing on behalf of Washington County,” Irey Vaughan said. “This is nothing more than theatrics and meritless nonsense.”

While Wertz provided documentation of his attempts to get his phone number registered, it’s unclear whether he went through the correct process for attorneys to speak with clients. It’s also unknown if an automated disclaimer message was played before the conversations he had with his clients, which should have notified them that they were being inadvertently recorded.

Wertz said he believes he followed the correct system because he and Fewell were at one time friends and discussed the process while socializing in the past.

“No one connected to this case can deny I’m an attorney,” Wertz said. “It’s just the way it is.”

Wertz is seeking financial damages and the removal from office of any publicly employed violators, according to his lawsuit. He also accuses the defendants of invasion of privacy and breach of contract by the telecommunications company. Inmate Calling Solutions did immediately respond Wednesday to an email seeking comment.