Donna Adelson was transferred from the Leon County Detention Facility, where she has long complained about her treatment, to the Wakulla County Detention Facility after a policy change left her without the use of a computer tablet.
Adelson, who is charged in the 2014 murder-for-hire of Florida State University law professor Dan Markel, was moved to her new digs behind bars on June 6. Shonda Knight, a Leon County Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman, said Adelson’s lawyers requested the transfer last week after the policy change went into effect.
Under the old policy, inmates in administrative custody – which includes solitary protective custody – had access to tablets in their cells. Under the new policy, Adelson and other such inmates could no longer use tablets.
“Her access was taken away, which is when her attorney made a request to have her relocated,” Knight said. “Once her attorney made the request to have her relocated, we did evaluate it and determined it was in the best interest of all parties to relocate her to Wakulla County.”
Knight added that the request by Adelson’s lawyer was just one factor in the decision to move her to Wakulla County.
Capt. Brett Surace, a spokesman for the Wakulla County Sheriff’s Office, said Adelson is being housed in a segregated unit with only a few inmates rather than in general custody. “She does have a tablet that she can use at her leisure,” Surace said.
Josh Zelman, one of Adelson’s attorneys, told the Democrat that she used her tablet to make phone calls to her lawyers three times a day, seven days a week to prepare for trial. On Friday, he said her husband, Harvey Adelson, called to say her tablet service had been cut off because of the policy change. After confirming that, he reached out to Wakulla County jail officials to ask whether she could be housed there.
“They agreed,” Zelman said. “It’s essentially a private agreement between two constitutional officers, so it doesn’t require court action.”
Leon Sheriff’s spokesperson: Inmates ‘abusing the policy’
Knight said the Sheriff’s Office, which runs the jail, made the “shift” in jail protocol “because we had individuals who were abusing the policy.”
“We were running into an issue where we had limited space because so many people were using the policy to be in a space by themselves verses being in the general population,” she said. “So that incentive was removed.”
Since the change, about half of the 50-70 inmates who were in administrative custody elected to go back to general population, Knight said. She added that no other lawyers asked for transfers after the policy change and no other inmates have been moved.
Knight said that all inmates at the detention facility have the ability to speak with their attorneys and that, even without access to a tablet, Adelson “could still communicate with her attorneys via phone call and personal visitation.”
‘Cruel and unusual punishment’ at Leon jail, Donna Adelson says
Adelson has long complained about her treatment at the Leon County Detention Facility, alleging “cruel and unusual punishment” in 2023 and saying she was subjected to blackmail and unwanted touching earlier this year.
In March, her attorneys asked Leon Circuit Judge Stephen Everett to set bond and allow her to be released pending trial. But Everett denied it, saying her attempt to board a flight from Miami to Vietnam in 2023 after her son Charlie Adelson’s conviction in the Markel murder made her a flight risk.
More recently, a jailhouse snitch alleged that Donna Adelson offered to pay for witness testimony in her trial, which touched off a new investigation by police and prosecutors. Though no charges were filed, the probe led to a delay in the trial, which had been set to start in June.
Donna Adelson is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and solicitation in the contract killing of Markel, her former son-in-law. Jury selection in her trial is set to begin Aug. 19.
(This story was updated to add new information.)
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or 850-599-2180.
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: Dan Markel murder: Jail policy change prompts Donna Adelson relocation
Reporting by Jeff Burlew, Tallahassee Democrat / Tallahassee Democrat
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