An Orange County sheriff’s sergeant has been placed on paid leave after accusations from defense lawyers that he eavesdropped on attorney-client telephone calls made from the jail and planted evidence in a drug case.
Attorneys in court papers say Sgt. Matthew LeFlore listened to recorded phone calls between a Theo Lacy jail inmate and his attorney and planted nearly 18 grams of methamphetamine in an unrelated drug case ultimately dropped by prosecutors.
Sheriff’s officials said police privacy law prevents the department from discussing why LeFlore was placed on leave Aug. 15. But Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders said he was told that an internal criminal investigation is under way.
“Hopefully, he will be finally held accountable, but history still says it’s a long shot,” Sanders said. “He has been so damaging to the criminal justice system, but up to now he hasn’t felt the slightest impact.”
LeFlore is accused by Sanders and others of listening illegally to at least five recorded conversations made in 2017 between inmate Taylor Camu-Ferguson and attorney Jon Andersen. In at least two of the conversations, Andersen and Camu-Ferguson mention LeFlore by name in invectives laced with expletives.
Andersen repeatedly warned LeFlore not to listen or face the consequences.
“Anyone attempts to listen to this, especially that 5 foot tall, deceitful, lying Orange County sheriff named LeFlore, we’ll seek prosecution, guaranteed. So don’t listen in,” Andersen says during one of the calls.
Sanders is using the phone accusations in court in an attempt to pry loose LeFlore’s personnel files from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
Questioned by Sanders during a court hearing, LeFlore said he did not remember the content of the phone calls.
The conversations were among nearly 34,000 attorney-client calls that were inadvertently recorded by the sheriff’s telephone vendor, GTL, now known as ViaPath Technologies. Talks between…
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