A Stevenson man charged with murder in Skamania County has successfully blocked the prosecutor and sheriff’s office from releasing a recording made from the jail there to his attorney.
Skamania Superior Court Judge Randall Krog ruled Thursday that William Prosser, 25, has a clear right under the state’s Public Records Act to prevent the disclosure of the recording.
“Mr. Prosser will suffer substantial, and irreparable harm if the recorded attorney-client call is released,” the judge wrote in a permanent injunction and restraining order. “Release would not only invade his privacy, but violate his attorney-client privilege.”
The Skamania County sheriff’s and prosecutor’s offices did not respond to Vancouver attorney D. Angus Lee’s complaint filed earlier this month.
“We would take issue with a good deal of the factual allegations in the complaint, but we’re in favor of the order, which was an agreement” between the attorneys, said Skamania County Prosecuting Attorney Adam Kick.
Prosser, through Lee, alleged that the sheriff’s office records all of its outgoing calls without giving notice to the people on the other end of the telephone line — a violation of Washington law governing the recording of private conversations.
According to the complaint, Prosser was being held in December 2017 as a suspect in the death of 37-year-old Michael K. McLaughlin, a Tigard, Ore., resident, when the sheriff’s office recorded an outgoing call and subsequent conversation between Prosser and his attorney.
During the conversation, Prosser and the attorney discussed facts about his case, as well as a defense theory. The call was downloaded and placed in a file accessible to every member of the Skamania prosecutor’s office and the lead detective in the murder case, according to the complaint.
Lee made a handful of additional allegations against prosecutors and deputies involved in the murder case, such as describing the practice of the sheriff’s office recording outgoing calls as “flatly illegal and constitutes a gross misdemeanor,” the complaint says.
Krog agreed to stop the recording from being released to anyone submitting a public records request, but he did not address Lee’s arguments on how the recording was shared or the sheriff’s office’s recording practices.
Prosser was arrested more than a year ago when McLaughlin was fatally shot on the morning of Dec. 17, 2017, outside a residence in Stevenson, Skamania sheriff’s deputies said at that time.
The deputies were called about 8:35 a.m. to the home in the 1500 block of Lakeview Drive. The caller reported hearing multiple gunshots and people screaming for the police, according to the sheriff’s office.
Responding deputies found McLaughlin dead outside the residence.
The initial investigation found that Prosser, McLaughlin and three other people were at the Bagby Hot Springs in the Mount Hood National Forest and then later drove to Stevenson. Shortly after they arrived, Prosser and McLaughlin got into an argument that ended with McLaughlin being shot, according to the sheriff’s office.
