The state Supreme Court has affirmed the 2013 conviction of Joanne A. Skok, rejecting her attorney's challenge of the state's use of phone calls recorded by the Montville woman she swindled.

Skok, 65, is serving a 10-year prison sentence for bilking an elderly woman out of more than $40,000 under the guise of helping her with a financial problem.

Her husband, John Skok, pleaded guilty to helping Skok scam Jacqueline Becker and was sentenced to a year in prison.

While incarcerated, Skok, who had a history of financial crimes, was transferred to a nursing home, where she was charged last year with fourth-degree larceny.

Police said she convinced a former neighbor from Ledyard to write her two checks totaling $1,700 for surgery that police said was never planned. That case is pending in New London Superior Court.

In the appeal, attorney John L. Cordani Jr. claimed the police violated the state Constitution when they helped Becker record incriminating phone conversations with Skok that were used at trial.

The police did not obtain a warrant before the recordings were made and Skok's attorney cited her "reasonable expectation of privacy" and right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure.

In its analysis of the case, the state Supreme Court concluded that neither federal nor state law prohibits someone from recording a private telephone conversation if one party to the conversation consents to the recording.

The justices determined Skok did not have "an objectively reasonable expectation of privacy" in her conversations with Becker.

"Although (Skok) may have had a subjective expectation that their conversations would remain private, the defendant's repeated insistence that Becker should not allow her family members to overhear their conversations demonstrates that even the defendant assumed that there was a reasonable possibility that they could or would do so," says the majority decision, written by Justice Andrew J. McDonald.

In a separate opinion, Justice Peter T. Zarella wrote that he concurs with the majority, but not with the use of a six-part test, delineated by the state Appellate Court in 1992 in State v. Geisler, to assess the constitutional claim.

The justices also rejected Skok's claim that she was denied due process because the trial judge, Arthur C. Hadden, "failed to conduct an independent inquiry regarding her competence to stand trial." 

Though Skok submitted letters indicating she had several physical ailments, there was no evidence that she could not understand the proceedings against her or assist in her defense, the court found.

k.florin@theday.com

Twitter: @KFLORIN