Senate Bill S3839

                                BILL NUMBER:S3839

TITLE OF BILL:  An act to amend the civil practice law and rules, in
relation to the admissibility as business records of recordings and
logs made by the department of correction of the city of New York of
inmate telephone calls

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:

Section one of this bill amends Rule 4518 of the Civil Practice Law
and Rules by adding a new subdivision (h) to provide that New York
City Department of Correction (DOC) recordings of inmate telephone
calls and logs containing identifying information about the calls are
admissible in evidence as business records without further need for
foundation testimony. The bill requires a certification or
authentication of the records. The party seeking to introduce the
records into evidence would have to provide reasonable written notice
to an adverse party and make the records and the certification or
authentication available for inspection.

Section two is the effective date.

REASONS FOR SUPPORT: It is current practice for The New York City
Department of Correction (DOC) to record telephone calls made by
Inmates as part of its regular course of business. DOC provides notice
to all people on the call and does not record inmate conversations
              

with their attorney or other privileged communications.  Computer
generated logs for these calls contain identifying information about
the call, including the time of call, the telephone number of origin,
the telephone number called, the inmate identification number used to
make the call, and the name of the inmate associated with that
identification number. These are then subject to subpoenas requesting
copies of these phone calls and directing DOC representatives to
appear and testify at court proceedings to authenticate the
recordings.

DOC receives approximately 200 requests per week from District
Attorneys and other parties for recordings of inmate telephone calls
and the corresponding logs. Current law requires that these recordings
and logs be authenticated with in-court testimony before they are
admitted into evidence, causing DOC to send an employee to court to
provide authentication testimony which, depending on court schedules,
can cause the employee to spend hours or even an entire day waiting to
testify in what turns out to be a routine process of authentication.

This proposal seeks the ability to authenticate recorded inmate phone
calls as a business record in writing, provided it bears a
certification by an appropriate DOC representative, as opposed to
sending a representative to appear and authenticate the record in
person and diverting already scarce department employee time and
resources. Codifying these recordings and logs as admissible under the
business record exception is appropriate because the records are made
by DOC in the regular course of business and similar allowance is
permissible by law for other business records such as hospital bills.
Nothing in this proposal would preclude the court from requesting the
appropriate DOC representative from being called to appear and
authenticate the record in person, it would simply allow for the


written authentication as a business record. The staff and resources
currently dedicated to authenticating these records in court could
then be better utilized on other pressing legal matters affecting DOC
and on efficiently responding to the parties' requests for records.

Accordingly, the Mayor urges the earliest possible favorable
consideration of this proposal by the Legislature.

LEGISLATIVE HISTORY:  2014: S.2485 Referred to Judiciary/A.6961
Referred to Codes.

EFFECTIVE DATE:

Immediately.