By Danielle E. Gaines
The Frederick News-Post
FREDERICK, Md. — After an investigation into how a Frederick County inmate produced contraband on the witness stand during an attempted murder trial was inconclusive, the sheriff’s office renewed its focus on searches of defendants transported to and from the courthouse.
Michael Angelo Jones was on trial for attempted murder and other charges in March when he took the witness stand to testify on his own behalf. Jones, 46, denied the charges against him and, while testifying, pulled a small SD memory card from the pocket of his jail uniform. The card contained videos that would show he was in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, at the same time police and prosecutors alleged Jones burst into the home of a former girlfriend, beat and choked her and then left her for dead, he said.
Jones testified that he was allowed to access his phone while he was at the detention center.
The surprise revelation led to an emergency hearing on the validity of the card and an internal investigation at the jail and in the courthouse, according to documents obtained through a Public Information Act request filed by the News-Post after Jones’ sentencing hearing.
The card wasn’t allowed as evidence in the trial, and the videos it contained couldn’t be corroborated. The jury was told not to consider Jones’ testimony about the card in reaching its verdict. He was found guilty of first-degree assault, second-degree assault, first-degree burglary and reckless endangerment. He was found not guilty of one charge: attempted second-degree murder.
The importance of the card
The memory card became an issue at trial because prosecutors believed it may contain evidence of the attack.
During the assault, the victim tried to call 911. She said Jones grabbed the phone and told her “you won’t be needing that,” prosecutors said.
Jones was arrested in July, and three phones he was carrying at the time were checked into the property room at the jail.
On Jan. 23, Jones called a woman and asked her to get the phones from the jail.
“I need you to come down here and get these phones. ... I need you to erase the thing I need to erase off this phone and get the SD card,” he told her, according to a search warrant applied for by Frederick police.
An investigator with the state’s attorney’s office listened to the call and went to the detention center on that day to take pictures of Jones’ cellphones as part of a warrant application.
The next day, police got the warrant and found that two of the three phones did not have a battery and one was missing an SD card.
The investigator from the state’s attorney’s office told Sgt. George L. Stottlemyer she believed there were batteries inside the phones on Jan. 23 based on their weight when she held them. She suggested Jones was “tipped off” about the warrant.
The investigation
Records show that Stottlemyer interviewed at least a dozen people relating to the contraband investigation but did not reach any conclusion about how Jones obtained the card.
The investigation was endorsed by Sheriff Chuck Jenkins, Frederick County Adult Detention Center Warden Lt. Col. William V. DeLauter and Chief Deputy Col. David Benjamin.
In a seven-page report, Stottlemyer wrote that after the jail was notified of the in-trial antics March 7, a team of correctional officers conducted a thorough check of the dayroom and cells in the A-Block, where Jones was being held. All inmates housed in the A-Block were also strip-searched.
No contraband was found during the search.
No other contraband was found on Jones when he was strip-searched upon his return to the jail.
Immediately after court, Jones told conflicting stories about how he received the card.
On March 12, Stottlemyer and Capt. Steven Snow tried to interview Jones and told him he would not be charged administratively or criminally for anything he said about the SD card, but Jones still would not talk, according to the report.
Stottlemyer was unable to determine when or how Jones got the card or how he concealed it before court.
When inmates arrive at the courthouse from the detention center, they are patted down in the garage area. They are then taken to holding cells inside the courthouse where they are searched again, including their shoes.
There are no electronic scans or searches, though the wands at the courthouse likely would not have registered the card in question, Stottlemyer wrote.
Each day during the trial, Jones carried a stack of paperwork with him. Deputies checked the paperwork by sorting through it, but it was not X-rayed, according to the investigation.
Stottlemyer’s report also addressed the concerns from the state’s attorney’s investigator. She never took the phones apart during the Jan. 23 visit to check for batteries or the cards, and he did not “put any confidence in her theory of a conspiracy,” Stottlemyer wrote.
When Stottlemyer tried to review surveillance video of the holding area where Jones’ possessions were collected when he was first brought into the jail, the video had already been taped over.
On April 8, Jenkins directed that the investigation be suspended unless new information comes to light.
“Jones is clearly uncooperative and will provide no answers. I do not believe, and there is nothing to indicate that any (correctional officer) gave Jones the card or allowed Jones to access a cellphone,” Jenkins wrote.
He and Benjamin wrote that the sheriff’s office should refocus on more thorough inmate searches during transportation to and from court.
“This incident can be used as a learning/training experience with an emphasis placed on inmate searches,” Benjamin wrote.
Sentencing and additional contraband
In May, Jones was sentenced to 20 1/2 years in prison.
The sentencing hearing came after several disruptions in Jones’ three-day trial in March.
During Assistant State’s Attorney Tammy Leache’s closing argument, Jones flung water from a pitcher and shouted expletives while calling her a liar. He was tackled by courthouse deputies and removed from the courtroom.
Since the trial, Jones was again found with contraband at the jail.
On May 5, correctional officers searched his cell after receiving a tip. A razor blade was found hidden in the waistband of a pair of boxer shorts, DeLauter said.
Jones received disciplinary action after a hearing at the detention center. He was also placed in disciplinary custody for making threats to correctional officers, Leache said.
Jones has another pending criminal case in Frederick County, but he was transferred to a state prison until that trial.