Opinion ID: 1377397
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Evidentiary Hearing to Determine Extent of Monitoring of Defendant's Jailhouse Conversations

Text: (20) As a result of the information obtained from Oglesby regarding defendant's escape plan, the district attorney arranged to monitor defendant's conversations with visitors. Defendant now asserts that, in view of the nature of the penalty, we should take the extraordinary step of remanding for an evidentiary hearing to ascertain the nature and extent of these taps in order to determine if any impropriety was involved in the prosecution of the action. Essentially, he suggests the jailhouse monitoring may have hampered his presentation of a diminished capacity defense. We reject defendant's contention. First, as he is obviously aware, the proper procedure for obtaining an evidentiary hearing is by a petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Second, even if we were to construe his appellate brief as a petition for a writ of habeas corpus, we could not order an evidentiary hearing. Defendant alleges no facts which, if true, would warrant relief. There is no contention that conversations between defendant and his attorneys or psychiatrists were monitored. Nor, as noted above, is there any suggestion of what, if anything, the psychiatric examinations would have disclosed.