People v. Superior Court of Santa Cruz County
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Jail personnel search inmate mail for contraband. To preserve confidentiality, mail from an inmate to an attorney is opened in front of the inmate; the contents are visually inspected but not read. An officer noticed an envelope from Cortez addressed to his attorney; with a “bulk in the center.” It smelled of feces. Suspecting the envelope contained contraband, he opened it but not in front of Cortez. The envelope contained another envelope fashioned from the lined yellow paper, marked “do not read.” The officer opened it and found multiple "kites," each made from different colored paper and with different writing. Kites are clandestine notes, written by inmates on small pieces of paper in very small print, then rolled up to minimize their size and facilitate concealment. The officer informed his supervisor.
A magistrate conducted an in-camera examination and concluded: The messages have “the teeny tiny writing ... indicative of a gang-related kite…. I did not read the substance … none of them were addressed to [Cortez’s attorney]. None of them ... appeared to even be written by Cortez…. I do not find the attorney-client privilege applies.” The court of appeal agreed. The magistrate’s findings were supported by substantial evidence. Even if the jail violated the regulation requiring legal mail to be opened in the inmate’s presence, the remedy would not automatically render everything inside the envelope—including communications intended for people other than an attorney—subject to attorney-client privilege.
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