Confidential jail phone calls were recorded by S.F. sheriffs and improperly given to prosecutors  

The San Francisco Sheriff’s Office admitted Thursday that an “administrative breakdown” led the department to record over a dozen confidential jail phone calls between people awaiting trial and their lawyers in the last two years. It then improperly shared those recordings with prosecutors. The sheriff’s department, which runs the county jails, records nearly every phone call made by people in jail. They often share those calls with staff from the district attorney’s office, who can use those recordings to prosecute cases. But it is illegal to record conversations between people awaiting trial and their lawyers, and the sheriff’s department has a process to keep attorney-client calls from being recorded. There was a breakdown in the process, however, and the public defender’s office said it discovered at least 20 of its confidential phone calls with clients were recorded and delivered to prosecutors. The sheriff’s department admitted the mistake today. Public defenders learned one call was in prosecutors’ hands only when the prosecutor emailed a colleague at the public defender’s office and wrote that he recognized the public defender’s voice on the call. The prosecutor then stopped listening, the public defender was told. In other cases, public defenders came across recordings of their phone calls while looking through documents prosecutors had shared before trial, they said. Sheriff’s department spokesperson Tara Moriarty said the improper sharing was the result of an administrative mistake. The phone numbers of attorneys representing incarcerated clients awaiting trial are emailed to the sheriff’s department and then included on a list of numbers not to be recorded. Every attorney who had their calls improperly shared with prosecutors had submitted their phone numbers, according to the public defender’s office. Somehow, Moriarty said, some emails containing those excluded numbers were not processed correctly. “Attorney telephone numbers designated as confidential are placed on an exclusion list to prevent those calls from being recorded,” Moriarty wrote. “Our review identified an administrative breakdown in the process for updating that list.” Since being informed of these leaks earlier this year, the sheriff’s department has conducted an internal investigation. It found that at least 38 phone numbers associated with the public defender’s office were not properly registered. In California, it is a felony to intentionally record a conversation made between someone in custody and their lawyer. Moriarty said that attorney phone number lists have been revised and updated. Additionally, she said, the sheriff’s department put a freeze on its regular process of sharing recordings since Aug. 27. Kwixuan Maloof, a deputy public defender, had his phone number shared with the sheriff’s department on July 8, 2025. Yet Maloof said that, in the last year, at least five calls with clients were recorded and later improperly shared with prosecutors. Three of those calls were for homicide cases, he said, and in every call he discussed legal strategy. “I mean, [the prosecutor] cannot unhear what he heard,” Maloof said. “You cannot un-ring that bell.” ‘This call will be recorded’ Unless you are calling your attorney while inside San Francisco jail, the sheriff’s department records all of your calls with the company ViaPath. On both ends, callers are warned and reminded that their conversations are being recorded. It is not uncommon for prosecutors with the district attorney’s office to request recordings of phone calls as evidence for prosecuting cases. According to data acquired by the public defender’s office and reviewed by Mission Local , staff with the district attorney’s office requested phone calls from the sheriff’s department over 1,000 times between Jan. 1, 2025, and July 2026. The sheriff’s department has taken steps to restrict access to these recordings during its investigation of the error, said Moriarty. Since August 27, staff with the district attorney’s office has had to subpoena phone calls they want from the sheriff’s office. The district attorney’s office has not yet responded to Mission Local ‘s request for comment. The sheriff’s department has not yet said whether it will change the process, long-term, for the recording and sharing of phone calls, although Moriarty wrote that the office will evaluate possible technology or administrative processes that might “strengthen safeguards and prevent similar errors in the future.” For some clients, though, the trust is broken. Maloof said that many of his clients do not want to talk on the phone now. “They know the district attorney has been listening to our phone calls,” he said, “even when I told them the district attorney can’t.”