Westmoreland County Prison to review visitation logs in wake of smuggling bust at Allegheny County Jail

Westmoreland County Prison officials said Monday they will review facility entrance logs to determine if a local attorney charged last week with smuggling drugs to inmates at the Allegheny County jail had similarly visited the lockup in Hempfield.

Following the release last week of a grand jury presentment, lawyer Paul Gettleman, 74, of Lawrence County, was charged along with five other people in what investigators said was a scheme to deliver synthetic marijuana to inmates in the Allegheny County Jail.

The drug, according to the investigation, was smuggled via documents delivered by Gettleman to inmates for a fee.

Gettleman in the past represented clients in Westmoreland County.

“We will look to see if he was here and to see who, if anybody, he visited,” said Westmoreland County Prison Warden John Walton.

According to its findings, a grand jury found evidence that Allegheny County jail inmates contacted friends and family to get the drug-laced papers to Gettleman, who would take it to the jail. Gettleman allegedly charged clients between $500 and $1,000 per visit, according to the grand jury presentment.

The powerful synthetic, known as K2, caused problems at other prisons and jails and has periodically been found in Westmoreland’s lockup along with other drugs that can be dissolved onto paper, Walton said. Just last week, local police broke up a scheme in which an inmate and his girlfriend were arrested for attempting to smuggle in doses of Suboxone under stamps affixed to envelopes mailed into the jail.

Walton said policies put into place several years ago prevent lawyers from passing any documents, legal or otherwise, to inmates. Lawyers are not permitted to leave any documents behind after visits, he said.

“All legal paperwork has to come in through the mail or given to inmates directly by the court,” Walton said.

And no mail is given directly to inmates.

All correspondence is opened by jail officials. Letters and other mail not considered legal documents are copied, along with the envelopes they come in, and then passed out to inmates. Legal mail is opened in front of inmates and inspected for the presence of drugs before they are turned over, Walton said.

Sheriff Jonathan Held, who serves as chairman of the county’s prison board, said deputies, who transfer criminal defendants to and from the jail, are instructed to prevent any papers from being passed to inmates by the public.

“That’s been our policy for years,” Held said.