Erie County Attorney Cheryl A. Green has thrown up a new obstacle for the U. S. Justice Department, continuing her almost two-year stand against federal intervention with the county’s jails.

A federal judge has ordered Erie County to let suicide-prevention experts into the jails starting next Monday and to let them conduct interviews.

But Green demands that the Justice Department question county employees and inmates only during formal depositions — with a county attorney objecting as necessary.

If Green has her way, Justice Department lawyers would have to give her written notice of the employees or inmates they want to speak with. From there, a deposition would be scheduled. A county lawyer would attend. The event would be transcribed.

Green says she will only allow interviews that are under oath, on the record and in accord with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. The requirement threatens to slow the Justice Department’s examination of Erie County’s suicide-prevention measures.

A federal expert contends that the Holding Center’s suicide rate is almost five times the national average for jails based on the average daily population. While Green says that measure is misleading, other figures indicate the busy Holding Center has a high rate of suicides. The State Commission of Correction says Erie County’s suicide rate is some 82 percent above the statewide mean for county jails in New York.

At least five Holding Center inmates have killed themselves since the Justice Department began requesting access early in 2008.

In court papers, the Justice Department responded that Green’s goal is to restrict the agency’s ability to gather information by forcing expensive and time-consuming depositions.

Further, the Justice Department said, the depositions would have a chilling effect on an inmate’s willingness to speak freely about suicide prevention and mental health care inside the county’s jails.

“These actions directly violate this court’s order,” the Justice Department’s Zazy I. Lopez said in written documents about Green’s latest stand. “They rest on the mistaken premise that, once litigation has commenced, the only way a party may communicate with potential witnesses is by taking their deposition. But that has never been the law.”

Both Green and the Justice Department are asking U. S. District Judge William M. Skretny to decide the matter.

Skretny, after a spate of suicides and suicide attempts in Erie County’s jails over the previous 90 days, ordered March 6 that the county turn over documents that will help a federal expert assess the suicide-prevention efforts at the Holding Center in Buffalo and the Correctional Facility in Alden.

Skretny also ruled that Green and the county’s Jail Management Division must open the doors for an inspection related to suicide prevention next week.

“County lawyers and representatives may accompany the Justice Department and will be present when county employees are questioned,” the judge wrote.

Soon after, both Green and County Executive Chris Collins said they saw Skretny’s assurance that county lawyers can be present during interviews with employees as validating the county’s position.

“The judge’s ruling validates our stance,” Collins said. “We’ve never had anything to hide.”

Said Green: “We’ve always said that we’d give them access as long as a county attorney is present. That is extremely important from the county’s perspective,” she told The Buffalo News days ago.

But Green recently explained that while “we had always told them they could tour the facilities as long as a county attorney is present, that does not mean we would allow them to conduct interviews outside of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.”

Green’s court papers seeking the chance to argue her position before Skretny say that she cannot let the Justice Department proceed in “free-for-all fashion.”

“It would be highly disruptive — not to mention dangerous — for jail personnel to be interviewed by plaintiffs’ attorneys, consultants, experts and investigators while they are maintaining security and safety at the facility,” she wrote in court papers.

In an interview, Green said that Skretny could schedule a hearing quickly enough to ensure that the Justice Department’s tour still begins next Monday. She said she was not trying to delay that inspection.

The standoff developed last week.

Green on Tuesday wrote to Lopez at the Justice Department to say that while “the County of Erie intends to comply with Judge Skretny’s recent order . . . logistical questions need to be worked out.”

She went on to explain that though Skretny granted the Justice Department access, the agency is a litigant in a larger lawsuit seeking improved conditions at the jails. So the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure apply, she said, and that means formal depositions for employees and inmates under county supervision, even though inmates are not parties to the lawsuit.

Green said that with inmates, she wanted a county lawyer to also pose questions during interviews. Otherwise, she said, the Justice Department would have “the unfair advantage in this litigation to only present testimony obtained from the inmates that is favorable to the United States.”

Shanetta Y. Cutlar, chief of the Justice Department’s special litigation section, responded in a letter that Skretny’s order allowed the department to interview inmates away from county lawyers.

“Inmates have a First Amendment right to speak to government representatives,” Cutlar wrote, “and the United States does not seek sworn testimony from inmates at this time. The fact that incarceration places inmates within the custody and control of the county does not make them unavailable.”

Green and the Justice Department lawyers talked by telephone Wednesday to see if they could reach an agreement and work out other logistics. But in its papers, the Justice Department said that the parties are at an impasse.