A man accused of strangling a Clark Atlanta University student nearly six years ago cannot keep jurors from hearing recorded jail calls in which he might have incriminated himself, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
Reversing a Fulton County judge’s decision, the court said Barron Brantley can’t expect privacy when calling people other than his lawyer from the Fulton jail’s recorded line. The justices sided with prosecutors who hope to introduce three of those phone calls at trial.
Brantley and then-girlfriend Jordyn Jones are accused of strangling and smothering 21-year-old Alexis Janaé Crawford in 2019 before placing her body in a plastic bin and leaving it in the woods at a DeKalb County park. The college senior’s Halloween morning disappearance stunned the community and prompted a weeklong search for the Athens native.
Jones was Crawford’s roommate and close friend, stunned family members said after the arrests. They said Jones, a Michigan native, had visited the Crawford family during holidays rather than traveling home.
Atlanta police launched an investigation into the college student’s disappearance Nov. 1 after her family reported her missing. Jones initially told detectives she did not know her roommate’s whereabouts. She also told Crawford’s family she had no idea where she was, prosecutors said.
But after a weeklong search, authorities said Brantley admitted to investigators that he had choked and killed Crawford, according to court documents. Investigators later determined she had been strangled to death and smothered with a plastic bag before her remains were dumped in the park.
Five days before her disappearance, Crawford filed a police report accusing Brantley of sexually assaulting her at the McDaniel Street apartment. An assault kit revealed the presence of Brantley’s DNA, prosecutors said in court filings.
Weeks before his murder trial was set to begin, Brantley sought to exclude incriminating statements allegedly made during three recorded phone calls that Fulton County prosecutors planned to introduce as evidence. None of those calls were to his attorney, and an automated message at the beginning of each call informed Brantley that his jailhouse conversations were monitored and recorded.
Brantley’s attorney argued those recordings violated his rights and should be excluded from evidence because they referenced her client’s criminal history, news coverage about the case and even his prior statements to police that were later suppressed.
At a hearing last year, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Belinda Edwards raised concerns about the ease with which prosecutors are able to get jail recordings from the sheriff’s office, calling it “unfettered access.”
“I just think that the state maybe should have a process, which means they come and get a subpoena, or they get a warrant. But they seem to get access,” Edwards said.
In its decision reversing her ruling, the Georgia Supreme Court said the sheriff’s practice of sharing recorded jail calls with prosecutors does not violate the Fourth Amendment. The court noted a 2007 decision in which it held pretrial detainees have no reasonable expectation of privacy during jail calls when speaking to someone other than their attorney.
“Once Brantley talked to a third-party on the jail’s recorded phone system, he ‘necessarily risked’ that this information would be disclosed to law enforcement,” Chief Justice Nels Peterson wrote.
The justices also held that incarcerated people are not similarly situated to those who are not in jail and that recording Brantley’s phone calls for use at trial did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff's Office
Credit: Fulton County Sheriff's Office
Both Brantley and Jones are awaiting trail at the Fulton County Jail, where they’ve been held since their November 2019 arrests, records show. Brantley is charged with malice murder, felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment, concealing a death, rape and aggravated sexual battery. Jones faces one count of murder, two counts of felony murder, aggravated assault, false imprisonment and concealing a death.
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