I am an assistant district attorney and there is a criminal defendant who has been a fugitive. I called to try to locate the fugitive and he answered the phone. He refused to state where he was. Shortly afterward, I received a contact from the public defender’s office indicating that I was not to talk to the defendant. Did the public defender’s office do something wrong, and did I do something wrong?
In the question, the assistant district attorney did nothing wrong. As part of his job, he was trying to locate the fugitive, and, through inadvertence, he actually spoke to the fugitive on one of the numbers he called. It is the job of the assistant district attorney and the police and detective who work with him to find a fugitive criminal defendant. This is not a situation where the lawyer was attempting to talk to someone already represented. This was a situation where the defendant was a fugitive.
