Attorney Client Privilege

When federal agents raided the Camden County law offices of Console, Marmero, LiVolsi & Wood, seizing business records, client information and more than 400 case files, they opened a constitutional can of worms. As the agents hauled away cartons of the law firm's records, they fueled a growing controversy about the investigative techniques used by law-enforcement authorities and what some experts say is a steady erosion of attorney-client privilege. With increasing frequency, lawyers, particularly those specializing in criminal defense, are becoming targets of grand jury subpoenas, search-and- seizure warrants, wiretap orders and other techniques used to gather evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

In a sharp defeat for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, the Supreme Court blocked him yesterday from obtaining a lawyer's notes that Starr said he needed for his criminal investigation of Hillary Rodham Clinton. The notes were written by a private lawyer about his meeting with deputy White House counsel Vincent Foster in 1993 shortly before Foster killed himself. Starr wanted them as evidence of whether Hillary Clinton lied when she said she played no role in a 1993 purge of personnel in the White House travel office.

You or a member of your family has legal trouble. So you see a lawyer. The lawyer tells you, as attorneys have told clients for centuries, that everything you say will be held in the strictest confidence. "But when you die," the lawyer adds, "I could be forced to provide embarrassing or even incriminating testimony in a criminal investigation or trial, perhaps of a friend or relative of yours, if a judge decides that what you tell me is important to the prosecution. Now tell me the whole story so I can do my best for you. " That hypothetical warning could become commonplace if independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who has a string of lower-court victories in his investigation of President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, also wins in a Supreme Court case to be argued today.

Independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr told a federal appeals court yesterday that presidential confidant Bruce Lindsey should be forced to testify before a grand jury, despite his claim of attorney-client privilege. The three judges asked tough questions of both Starr and lawyers for the White House and the Justice Department before the hearing adjourned behind closed doors. The judges are hearing the White House's appeal of Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson's ruling that the needs of the grand jury investigation outweighed any privilege between Lindsey, the deputy White House counsel, and his client, President Clinton.

Displaying his knack for aggressive prosecution, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr is trying to pry open the confidential relationship between an attorney and his client. Specifically, Starr has subpoenaed records in the possession of Francis Carter, an attorney who briefly represented Monica S. Lewinsky before her current lawyer. During a closed-door hearing that lasted more than two hours yesterday, Carter's lawyers tried to quash the subpoena, arguing that it would violate the attorney-client relationship.

Former Philadelphia defense lawyer Linda Backiel yesterday was imprisoned indefinitely for civil contempt after she refused to testify before a federal grand jury in a bail-jumping investigation of self-described revolutionary Elizabeth Ann Duke. During a hearing before U.S. District Judge Charles R. Weiner, Backiel said she was refusing to testify as a matter of principle. "I will go to jail with my conscience," she said. As she was led away by federal marshals, Backiel received a standing ovation from a group of about 25 supporters, and she blew them all a kiss on her way out of the courtroom.

Giving a victory to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, the Supreme Court agreed yesterday to speed up its hearing of a case that Starr says is important to his investigation of the Clinton administration. Reversing themselves, the justices said they would hear arguments June 8 - not next term - on whether a lawyer for White House deputy counsel Vincent Foster must surrender his notes taken before Foster killed himself. The lawyer has argued that attorney-client privilege means the notes can be kept secret even though the client has died.

A lawyer cannot help a fugitive client escape trial by hiding behind the attorney-client privilege, the state Supreme Court ruled yesterday. The high court reinstated a contempt order against Philadelphia lawyer Holly Maguigan, issued in 1983 after she refused to reveal where her missing client, Carlos Aquino, was living. Aquino had been scheduled for trial on rape charges. The district attorney's office had tried to force Maguigan to provide the "address and phone number" of her client, but she claimed the information would require her to violate the attorney-client privilege.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia fought Monday to keep private 12 documents that could reveal how its lawyers advised church leaders to handle claims that priests were molesting children. The records include correspondence between the lawyers and Msgr. William J. Lynn, the church official criminally charged over his alleged role in responding to abuse allegations in the 1990s. Most concern the "development of policy" by the archdiocese, its attorney, Robert Welsh, said during a Common Pleas Court hearing.

The White House lost another legal round yesterday in its fight to keep potential witnesses away from the Monica Lewinsky grand jury, as Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist refused to block testimony from presidential lawyers. Shortly after Rehnquist's ruling, independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's prosecutors summoned White House lawyer Lanny Breuer to testify. But after several hours before the grand jury, the session came to an abrupt halt and Breuer, his lawyer, White House lawyers and Starr's top deputy adjourned to a closed-door hearing before Chief U.S. District Judge Norma Holloway Johnson.

The Archdiocese of Philadelphia fought Monday to keep private 12 documents that could reveal how its lawyers advised church leaders to handle claims that priests were molesting children. The records include correspondence between the lawyers and Msgr. William J. Lynn, the church official criminally charged over his alleged role in responding to abuse allegations in the 1990s. Most concern the "development of policy" by the archdiocese, its attorney, Robert Welsh, said during a Common Pleas Court hearing.

A Montgomery County Court judge refused Friday to dismiss charges against accused child-killer James Lee Troutman despite defense claims that writings seized by police from the defendant's jail cell last year prejudiced the case. After the body of 9-year-old Skyler Kauffman was found at a Souderton apartment complex in May 2011, Troutman was arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, kidnapping, and rape. He is held in the Montgomery County prison. Part of his time has been spent writing down his thoughts for his lawyers, psychiatrist, and another inmate.

A Montgomery County Court judge refused Friday to dismiss charges against accused child-killer James Lee Troutman despite defense claims that writings seized by police from the defendant's jail cell last year prejudiced the case. After the body of 9-year-old Skyler Kauffman was found at a Souderton apartment complex in May 2011, Troutman was arrested and charged with first- and second-degree murder, kidnapping, and rape. He is held in the Montgomery County prison. Part of his time has been spent writing down his thoughts for his lawyers, psychiatrist, and another inmate.

Eric Deshann Floyd, one of two men on trial in the killing of a Philadelphia police officer, will remain barred from the courtroom, the trial's judge said yesterday. Common Pleas Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes said that during an extensive conversation she had with Floyd, "he refused to follow the rules of the court. " Hughes questioned Floyd with defense attorney Earl Kauffman for more than an hour in a cleared courtroom to protect the defendant's attorney-client privilege. Floyd, 35, has watched court proceedings in a Criminal Justice Center jail cell via closed-circuit television since June 9, when he attacked his other court-appointed attorney, William Bowe.

A lawyer and longtime friend of indicted State Sen. Vincent J. Fumo's yesterday disputed Fumo's contention that he had advised him it was permissible to destroy e-mail while under FBI investigation. In an interview, Robert J. Scandone called Fumo's contention "absurd. " The issue is important because Fumo is charged with obstructing justice on allegations that he told staff to delete e-mail as the FBI and IRS investigation heated up. Fumo has said he got legal advice that the e-mail deletions were lawful.

In Harrisburg, Trenton, the U.S. Capitol, and hundreds of cities across the country, lobbyists must publicly disclose what they're doing, who they're doing it for, and how much they're spending to get it done. But not in Philadelphia. Here, lobbyists are free to lean on public officials in secrecy. They can spend as much as they like in the process, and they can - and typically do - keep that information private. That would change under legislation introduced yesterday by Councilman Frank Rizzo, who said the bill's goal was to track "the dollars that they spend directly, indirectly, so we know precisely who has an interest in what.

A federal grand jury in New Jersey is investigating whether a federal law enforcement agent broke the law by investing in a business operated by one of his informants, according to a court record. The informant's business "was at the center of an investigation in which [the agent] was responsible for coordinating" the informant's activities, according to an opinion filed by a federal appeals court in Philadelphia yesterday. In its ruling, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said that a lawyer representing the agent must testify before the grand jury.

It's a mountain of evidence - thousands of secretly recorded conversations, hundreds of FBI interview reports, and reams of pages of grand-jury testimony, all compiled during the federal investigation into corruption in Philadelphia government. And it's only going to grow. So two former J.P. Morgan Chase executives are asking a judge to grant them two more months to review that material to prepare for their trial, now set to begin Jan. 18. The former Morgan executives, Charles LeCroy and Anthony Snell, are charged in one segment of the sweeping indictment announced in June.