A Kanawha County public defender has been removed from a case after she gave her client information with the name of a confidential police informant, and that name ended up on social media.
After Branda Basham was killed in July of 2014 in retaliation for working as a confidential informant for the Charleston Police Department, the Kanawha County Prosecuting Attorney's Office implemented a policy that they will ask defense lawyers not to release to defendants the physical copies of any information relating to confidential informants, and request they sign a court order barring them from doing so.
Kanawha County Prosecuting Attorney Chuck Miller said defendants still had the right to know who could possibly testify against them, but the orders directed that physical packets were not to be distributed.
On Tuesday afternoon, public defender Sara Whitaker was called to Circuit Judge Tod Kaufman's chambers. Whitaker admitted that she gave information to her client, Tracie Jones, that included the name of the informant Jones allegedly sold drugs to.
"The most egregious thing is the absolute violation of the order - the protective order," Kaufman said, referring to the Oct. 23 order prohibiting the copying or dissemniation of informants' identities.
Jones, 45, of Charleston, was charged with possession with intent to distribute oxycodone on July 9. She allegedly sold to a confidential informant working with the Metro Drug Unit on April 20, according to a criminal complaint filed in Kanawha Circuit Court.
Whitaker told the judge that on Dec. 2, she and Jones spent about two hours reviewing the packet, as well as audio and video evidence, and she forgot to ask for the copy of the packet back.
"It had slipped my mind at that point," she told the judge.
Another person, who used to live with Jones, then posted a photo of the packet on social media, according to assistant Kanawha County prosecutor Tera Salango. That person could face charges such as retaliation or witness intimidation.
Salango said the judge has ordered the parties involved not to release the name of the person who posted the photo of the packet.
The judge told Whitaker that she was no longer representing Jones in the case. He assigned lawyer Trigg Salsbery, who said he would take the case for free, to represent Jones. Kaufman said Whitaker can no longer serve as Jones' counsel because she has become a potential witness. "That's certainly not what the public defender's office is in business to do," he said.
The judge asked Whitaker whether she would take the stand, but after conferring with managing deputy public defender Ronni Sheets, Whitaker chose not to say any more than she had already said.
Sheets told the judge she believed Whitaker's actions were an accident.
Sheets said she became aware of the incident yesterday, and the public defender's office would implement changes to make sure the release of files does not happen again.
"The policy from now on will be just don't photocopy them at all," she said.
Miller also attended. He said he wanted to tell Kaufman his office was willing to implement a new policy to ensure a similar problem does not happen again, and that a similar incident has occurred twice since the office has made the confidential informant packets subject to non-disclosure orders.
"Twice is twice too many," he said.
He suggested that attorneys bring clients to the prosecuting attorney's office to review packets in the future, and take notes, so that no copies have to be made.
Kaufman said he thought that sounded like a good idea. "You could make notes of it, as you would a law school case," he said.
Kaufman said he wasn't sure what sanctions Whitaker could face. He told the parties to appear again in his court on Thursday afternoon.
Reach Erin Beck at erin.beck@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5163, Facebook.com/erinbeckwv, or follow @erinbeckwv on Twitter.