Warren County Regional Jail has agreed to set regulations allowing for attorneys to make after-hours or weekend visits to incarcerated clients, settling a lawsuit brought last year in which lawyer Alan Simpson claimed he was denied access to a jailed client without an appointment.

A memorandum of understanding entered Jan. 31 in the civil case establishes that attorneys who have not made an appointment and have an emergency need to meet with an inmate shall call the jail between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. and request a visitation.

For emergencies occurring between 4 p.m. and 11 p.m., attorneys may contact the shift supervisor through jail booking staff, and if the jail can make the accommodation, the shift supervisor will provide time for what the memorandum calls an “on-site or through-the glass visitation by the attorney.”

Also, the jail shall pass messages “as soon as practical” from attorneys to inmates requesting their clients call their legal counsel, and that this shall be done between 8 a.m. and 11 p.m.

The jail will also continue to allow attorneys to schedule in-person, through-the-glass and video phone appointments by calling the jail’s administrative office.

The terms of the memorandum bring an end to a lawsuit that Simpson filed in Warren Circuit Court last year on behalf of Michael White, a client who has been jailed on pending criminal charges since July 15.

Warren County Jailer Stephen Harmon and the jail itself were named as defendants.

Simpson claimed an attempt to meet with White last year after White had requested a meeting over the phone was stymied by a jail employee who told him he could not enter the facility and meet White without an appointment.

The lawsuit alleged that the jail’s policy at the time limiting meetings between attorneys and jailed clients to one hour and requiring a scheduled appointment for a specific date and time were vestiges of restrictions phased in at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Simpson argued that those restrictions are now outmoded and unconstitutional.

“The rules of criminal procedure in Kentucky say we’re supposed to have reasonable access to our clients,” Simpson told the Daily News this week. “What we think is reasonable and what the jail thought was reasonable are sometimes two different things.”

Prior to the lawsuit, Simpson said there had been instances when he had to contact a judge and request them to issue an order requiring the jail to bring an incarcerated defendant to the Warren County Justice Center so that Simpson could confer with the defendant.

“I know they’ve had a worker shortage at the jail, but quite frankly the rules of criminal procedure and the Constitution don’t contemplate that,” Simpson said. “We’re entitled to see our clients when we need to see them. There’s not an attorney I know that just wants to go over to the jail and hang out and disrupt operations, we want to meet with clients and go over discovery or get names of potential witnesses or talk to them about a hearing that’s coming up or a plea offer.”

Simpson said the settlement came about after a mediation session presided over by retired judge Steve Wilson and that he was thankful to Harmon “for agreeing to restore access to our clients.”

Harmon declined to comment about the settlement, referring a reporter to a chart on the jail’s website that showed a total of 1,485 attorney visits at the facility for 2024, with a high number of 147 visits in November and a low of 99 in June.

Attorney visits from court-appointed lawyers of the Department of Public Advocacy totaled 698 in 2024, with a high of 77 in October and a low of 42 in March, according to information on the jail’s website.

The website also features a revised edition of the jail’s attorney visitation policy, which includes the provisions reached in the agreement to settle the lawsuit and which goes into effect Feb. 13.