Trial court did not properly analyze whether surveillance at Staten Island courthouse violates Sixth Amendment

Twenty years ago, the City of New York settled a lawsuit claiming the Staten Island courthouse did have private spaces for lawyers to talk to their pre-arraignment clients. When the City opened a new courthouse in Staten Island, the Sixth Amendment concerns resurfaced because the City installed surveillance booths in the attorney-client areas to prevent security incidents. The Court of Appeals says this surveillance situation might violate the Sixth Amendment.

The case is Grubbs v. O'Neill, a summary order issued on December 3. The trial court said the new surveillance cameras do not violate the Sixth Amendment because the cameras use "masking" technology which blocks out the lawyer's face and does not record the attorney-client conversations.

Here is the legal standard governing cases like this:

To evaluate whether an institutional restriction on the Sixth Amendment rights of individuals in custody is valid, we employ a balancing test to determine if the restriction “unreasonably burden[s]” an individual in custody’s “opportunity to consult with his attorney and to prepare his defense.” Thus, it was the district court’s duty to balance the alleged burden the surveillance imposed on Plaintiffs-Appellants’ Sixth Amendment rights on the one hand with the City’s proffered institutional reasons for the surveillance on the other.

In rejecting the plaintiffs' claims, the district court got the analysis wrong because "it misunderstood important Sixth Amendment jurisprudence concerning conduct that chills a detainee’s communications with counsel. Specifically, the district court erroneously concluded that a detainee’s 'subjective impression or belief' that her conversation was being recorded and monitored did not constitute a cognizable burden on the Sixth Amendment. The district court did not appropriately consider the chilling effect that the cameras’ presence in the attorney–client booths could have on pre-arraignment detainees’ willingness to communicate candidly with their attorneys."

Since the trial court had to "weigh any chilling effect of the surveillance cameras against the City's security interests to determine whether the video surveillance with masking technology violates the Sixth Amendment," the case is sent back to the trial court to give this case a fresh look.