By Cornelius Frolik
Dayton Daily News, Ohio
DAYTON, Ohio — Inmates incarcerated in jails across the Miami Valley and the state of Ohio are warned that their jail phone calls are recorded.
And yet investigators and law enforcement officials often review these calls because sometimes suspects make incriminating statements or admissions or share other information that can be useful to a criminal investigation or at trial.
A man in Middletown who badly injured his landlord but claimed self-defense said on a recorded line that he didn’t view her as a threat to his safety.
Investigators in Montgomery County said they figured out where a suspected drug-trafficker’s weapons and narcotics were moved and hidden by listening to his jail calls.
A suspect in Greene County admitted in a jail call that he tried to outrun police on his motorcycle, which helped establish that he was willfully and dangerously fleeing and eluding a police officer.
Defense attorneys say criminal defendants should not discuss any details of their cases on jail phones because their comments could come back to haunt them in the courtroom.
“All of our lawyers tell our clients when we first meet them not to talk about the case on the phone,” said Montgomery County Public Defender Theresa Haire. “We then remind them periodically not to talk on the phone about their case. We also explain that even if what they believe what they have to say is helpful, it can backfire at trial.”
You can learn a lot from phone calls, such as plans for contraband being introduced to your facility or planned assaults on staff or other inmates. In the video below, Gordon Graham discusses the importance of checking inmate’s phone records.
Not a threat
On Aug. 14, 2021, a Middletown police officer on patrol was stopped by a man named Joshua Speaks who said he had been in an altercation with his roommate, Sarah Risner.
The officer found Risner upstairs in her home, badly injured, covered in blood and unable to speak.
Speaks claimed Risner pulled a knife on him, and police found a small kitchen knife near Risner in the home.
Risner later told police that Speaks was homeless but she was allowing him to stay with her temporarily. She said Speaks attacked her after she ordered him to move out.
Risner suffered very serious injuries, including a fracture to her orbital eye socket and a brain bleed, and she said she developed foreign accent syndrome.
Police said they learned that Speaks had been a “cage fighter” for years, knew mixed martial arts and had been in many MMA fights, according to court records from the Court of Appeals for the 12th Appellate District of Ohio.
At his trial, Speaks testified that Risner rushed at him at full speed and slashed at him with the knife. Speaks claimed he fought for his life.
But prosecutors played excerpts of several recorded jail calls in the courtroom.
In one call, Speaks told the person on the other end of the line that he is about a foot taller than Risner and much heavier and he “never once perceived her as a threat” and instead viewed her as someone who “mouths off,” says court records from the Court of Appeals.
Speaks is 6 feet, 2 inches tall and at that time weighed about 235 pounds. Risner is 5 feet, 3 inches tall, and weighed about 150 pounds.
At trial, Speaks tried to explain away his recorded comments by saying he was talking to his sister and he always used “gentle language” with her and he wanted to minimize the severity of the encounter, court documents state.
Speaks was found guilty of felonious assault in September of 2022 and sentenced to eight to 12 years in prison.
Asked about this case and jail calls in general, Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser told this newspaper, “Generally, I do not discuss legal police methods and practices with the general public. Other than a few law-abiding citizens who may be interested, such information serves no useful purpose while educating those interested in pursuing criminal conduct and how to avoid accountability.”
Ample notice
Inmates at the Butler County Jail who use the phone are played automated messages saying jail calls can be monitored and recorded.
These warnings also are written out and played on scrolls on TV screens during inmate video calls, the sheriff’s office said. Inmate handbooks say jail calls are recorded.
At the Montgomery County Jail, most housing units are equipped with phones in the common areas.
When inmates pick up the phones, they are played pre-recorded audio that says the calls are recorded and subject to monitoring at any time, said Montgomery County Sheriff’s Maj. Julie Stephens.
Inmates must enter their personal ID numbers before they make a phone call so officials know who is on the line.
Physical signage on the phones states that calls are subject to monitoring and recording, said Stephens, who oversees the jail.
Despite these and similar warnings, criminal defendants sometimes still talk about the facts of their cases with friends and loved ones, said Rittgers Rittgers & Nakajima, a criminal defense law firm with four offices in southwest Ohio.
The law firm says jail calls have been used at trial to try to show that a defendants’ statements in court contradict what they said on a recorded line. The firm said sometimes jail calls are played in court to try to attack the credibility of a defendant’s testimony.
Ohio court records and search warrant applications show that jail calls have been used to establish that defendants were at crime scenes or that they knew what they did was wrong or a crime.
A 57-year-old man in Greene County was sentenced to multiple years in prison after he admitted in a jail call to fleeing from police on his motorcycle at a speed in excess of 100 mph in a 35 mph zone. He crashed and was seriously injured.
In August 2023, a detective with the Dayton Police Department’s narcotics bureau saw multiple people remove items from the home of a suspected drug trafficker.
The suspect had been recently arrested and was incarcerated at the Montgomery County Jail when this happened. The detective listened to recordings of calls he made while in lock-up.
The suspect allegedly told his brother to “clean his home” in one call, says a federal affidavit in support of an application for a search warrant. In later calls, his brother allegedly said the items were removed and were placed in a storage locker that belonged to a sister.
Investigators used the information from the jail calls to obtain toll records for the sister that they say helped police identify the location of the storage locker.
A police K-9 performed an open air sniff of the storage locker and gave a positive alert to the presence of narcotics, the affidavit states. Police obtained and executed a search warrant and inside the locker they allegedly recovered multiple guns, 147 grams of cocaine and other evidence.
The case is still active.
Haire, the Montgomery County public defender, said most of her office’s clients follow their attorneys’ advice and do not talk about their cases on the phone. She said she doesn’t know why some people fail to heed this advice.
Haire said jail calls are rarely helpful. However, she said anecdotally she’s heard about cases where people the inmate called admit to the crimes on recorded lines. Sometimes, the people inmates called threatened them or told them not to cooperate with authorities or testify at trial.
In some cases, inmates end up getting charged with additional crimes because they are caught threatening witnesses or other people or warning them not to testify.
Police say criminal defendants sometimes make false or misleading comments in jail calls because they know they are being recorded and they hope to try to put law enforcement on the wrong track.
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