A major concern in the use of contraband cell phones in prison is the fact that the call content, and associated call data, is not being captured. Now this data can be captured by replacing smuggled cell phones with a secure prison cell phone solution such as meshDETECT that records and stores this critical information for use by law enforcement. This article discusses the importance of these prison phone call recordings to prosecutors and law enforcement.

When Kiheem Taylor was charged with kidnapping two teenagers at a Timonium light-rail station and raping one of them, prosecutors struggled with an all-too common problem — they didn’t have enough solid evidence.

But Taylor gave prosecutors a break when he made phone calls from the Baltimore County Detention Center. Just months earlier, authorities had begun recording inmates’ phone calls, and Taylor implicated himself while talking to an ex-girlfriend. Judge Robert N. Dugan said at the time that the call was “overwhelming, damning evidence of [Taylor’s] guilt.”

The 2008 case was the first time that Baltimore County prosecutors used a taped phone call from the detention center in a case, but the practice has been increasingly used across Maryland and the nation — including in the high-profile Trayvon Martin case. Though prosecutors say the evidence is crucial in otherwise difficult cases, defense attorneys complain that such monitoring is unfair to their clients.

William B. Buie III, who represented a teen in a recent murder case that relied on recorded prison calls, said he’s concerned such calls give government unrestricted power to monitor incarcerated individuals who have not yet been convicted. But such calls are “playing a major part of criminal cases,” he said.

Prosecutors have been monitoring calls for years, but improved — and increasingly affordable — technology has made it easier to record the calls, evaluate them and present them in court.

“It’s definitely a common practice,” said Steven Jansen, vice president of the National Association of Prosecuting Attorneys. “It can be great evidence.”

It’s no secret that the calls are monitored, he said, adding that some facilities even post signs next to phones. In Maryland, defendants are warned that their conversations are being recorded with a prompt each time they pick up receiver; officials can track them without seeking a judge’s approval.

But despite the warning at each call, defense attorney Jerry Tarud said, “The problem is, when these inmates are in jail, they tend to get isolated. Their anxiety sets in.”

For defense attorneys, the calls can be opportunities for their clients to unknowingly undermine their arguments, including in the Martin case in Florida. George Zimmerman, accused of killing the teen, had his original $150,000 bond revoked after authorities heard him discussing additional finances with his wife on a recorded line.

“The jail phone calls tend to be the nails going in the coffin,” Tarud said. It’s an increasing problem.”

In a city shooting trial last year, Tarud’s client, Donte Anderson, was convicted of first-degree assault after prosecutors pulled incriminating calls from jail.

In one call, prosecutors said, Anderson told an acquaintance about hiding the gun, in what they believe was coded language.

“Man … I can’t event tell you where’s it at right now cuz, he won’t be able to get to it,” Anderson said, according to court documents.

Dijon McClurkin, another defendant who was also convicted in the case, was allegedly also recorded telling an acquaintance to put pressure on the victim, who survived.

“You need to tell him that we ain’t do nothing, yeah man, those [expletive] ain’t do nothing, that’s what he needs to say, [expletive] ain’t do nothing, they are jammed up for no reason,” McClurkin said in a recorded call, according to court papers.

In addition to monitoring phone calls, law enforcement officials point out that detention facilities monitor mail and keep records of who visits. Inmates are also subjected to searches inside of their cells.

There, each inmate can choose up to 10 contacts; they can only call people on that list, according to the state Department of Public Safety And Correctional Services.

The Baltimore County Detention Center began recording all inmates’ calls in July 2008, one of the last jurisdictions in the state to adopt the technology. State’s Attorney Shellenberger had suggested the idea to the county police chief and the jail’s warden shortly after he took office in 2007.

The system was aimed at curbing contraband, gang violence and witness intimidation. Officials also hoped to prevent prisoners from ordering crime from behind bars.

Detention center staff, along with police and prosecutors, have access to phones in order to monitor for any potential problems within the facility. They also have the ability to block inmates from calling certain numbers if there are issues of witness intimidation or gangs.

“It’s to ferret out corruption we might have inside,” said James P. O’Neill, director of the detention center. But because the detention center on any given day ranges from 1,300 to 1,400 inmates, who have access to 80 phones from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m., not all calls are necessarily monitored.

Calls from attorneys are not recorded, either. O’Neil said all lawyers registered with the state bar association are omitted from recordings.

Last month, 19-year-old Sterlin Matthews was convicted of killing a 16-year-old on Halloween in 2008. It was the second time Baltimore County prosecutors tried the teen, after his first trial ended in a hung jury. Prosecutors were challenged by the lack of physical evidence linking Matthews to the shooting and uncooperative witnesses; the killer had been wearing a mask.

Buie, Matthews’ defense attorney, said after the trial that prosecutors “really did not know who committed the crime.” The jail calls, “sunk our ship,” he said.

County prosecutors William B. Bickel and Danielle Williams built a case around recordings of Matthews’ phone calls from the detention center, in which he is recorded telling friends about the witnesses to keep them from coming to court.

The jury took less than an hour to convict Matthews of second degree murder and related charges. His sentencing is scheduled for January.

“When you have a witness that says one thing to the police and then changes the story, if you can give an explanation, mainly a threat, then the jury will understand more,” Shellenberger said. “I think it was very helpful to give the jury context.”

When the trial was supposed to begin in mid-October, prosecutors said, the witness who identified Matthews in the shooting did not show up in court. She had previously identified Matthews to police as the masked teen who had been seen by the victim’s friends just before the shooting. Officials began to suspect witness intimidation.

Prosecutors said Matthews intentionally used another inmate’s ID number, which must be entered in order for inmates to make outgoing calls, to make it difficult for investigators to listen in on his conversations.

Homicide detective Alvin Barton also testified that he received a call from the witness saying she was too scared shortly before she was supposed to testify.

Matthews was also heard speaking to a friend through a wall, inside an interview room at police headquarters. All six of the interview rooms used by homicide detectives have surveillance cameras to record interviews with detectives.

When the detective left the room, Matthews is recorded speaking to one of his friends through the wall, saying his friend needed to “holler at them,” which prosecutors said was an attempt to deter the witness from testifying.

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A major concern about contraband cell phones smuggled into jail is the lack of control over the calls made by prisoners. As this article shows, recorded prison phone calls are a key source of evidence in investigations. The meshDETECT secure cell phone solution provides the ability to record and monitor all calls made by prisoners.

Domestic violence is one of the most confusing crimes prosecutors have to deal with. The victim and suspect know each other. They may even love each other.

But prosecutors do have one powerful tool that gives them insight into, and sometimes ammunition for their cases: inmate phone calls from jail.

Suspects cooling their heels in jail have a lot of time to stew, and make phone calls. In Ramsey County, for example, the fact that these calls have been recorded for more than a decade is no secret. Every call is stamped with a warning that the call is being recorded, and is subject to monitoring at any time.

But Mike Seasly, domestic supervisor in the St. Paul City Attorney’s office, said an awful lot of suspects brought in on domestic violence charges aren’t intimidated by that message.

“So often they’ll call the people that they just hit, that they just battered, or they’ll call people that can get in touch with those victims of domestic abuse,” Seasly said. “And the purpose often times is to apologize for what they’ve done. Often times, it’s to try to get back into their good graces.”

Seasly has saved some examples from past cases he calls his “jailhouse greatest hits.” MPR News can’t disclose full names of the people involved because the tapes aren’t considered public.

A suspect who was arrested for allegedly hitting and slapping his girlfriend instructs her from jail, “Call up that prosecutor and tell him I ain’t f—— do s—, man. Tell them we weren’t even with each other or something. You were just mad because you thought I was with some other girl or something.”

On the phone, his girlfriend says she’s already talked to the prosecutor. Her boyfriend continues, “I know you told them you don’t want to press charges, but the state will so tell them I wasn’t doing nothing. You got to call and tell him that, baby!”

“Tell them that I just made everything up?” asks his girlfriend.

“Yes!” the suspect responds. “You gotta look stupid, otherwise, I’m going to go to jail for a year!”

Seasly points out that the phone call itself is a crime. It violated a no-contact order between the suspect and the victim, which can be charged separately, and it provided evidence for the ongoing case.

This defendant served 18 months in prison. Without the jail tapes, Seasly thinks the case might have been dismissed.

ORCHESTRATING FROM JAIL

Another suspect was determined to outsmart the system.

“He tries to do something a little different, which is to actually tell the victim that court is not even taking place,” Seasly said.

The suspect calls a female friend and instructs her to go down to the police station and use the lobby phone and pretend to be the receptionist. “Call her and tell her the court date has been moved to the 31st,” the suspect said. The girlfriend has been subpoenaed and agreed to testify at the real court date a week earlier.

The suspect adds another precaution. “And then, look, Sunday night, call T-mobile and cut the phone off,” the suspect tells his friend, ensuring that anyone from the outside world who tries to reach the woman and remind her of the real court date, won’t be able to reach her.

The friend promises to make the calls.

But the plot was foiled by the jail tapes, and and the defendant pleaded guilty to the charges.

AN EXTRA BURDEN ON THE POOR

Pat Kittridge, lead public defender for Ramsey County, has concerns about using jail tapes to escalate charges for domestic violence suspects.

Poorer defendants are less likely to post bail so they stay in jail, where calls are monitored.

Kittridge said not all calls are attempts to manipulate the victim. The content can be innocuous — talking about family matters, school and children — but the consequences for the defendant for breaking a no-contact order are severe.

“No-contact orders between parties are very glibly granted by the court, and very grudgingly removed,” Kittridge said. “People have real needs to discuss matters with one another and to do so constitutes a violation of the law and it creates a great difficulty.”

According to the St. Paul City Attorney’s office, defendants in domestic assault cases typically do contact their victims after an assault. But there’s such a huge volume of jail tapes and limited resources to listen to them, prosecutors probably catch only a tiny fraction.

Back in Seasly’s office, one of his prosecutors stops in, visibly irritated. His trial has “imploded.” After repeatedly assuring him she’d be there, the victim failed to show.

“Pull the jail tapes,” said Seasly. “Someone got to her.”

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A new study uses – for the first time – recorded jailhouse telephone conversations between men charged with felony domestic violence and their victims to help reveal why some victims decide not to follow through on the charges.

Researchers listened to telephone conversations between 17 accused male abusers in a Washington state detention facility and their female victims, all of whom decided to withdraw their accusations of abuse. For each of the couples, the researchers analyzed up to about three hours of phone conversations.

The analysis of these conversations may fundamentally change how victim advocates and prosecutors work with domestic violence victims to prosecute abusers, according to the researchers.

“The existing belief is that victims recant because the perpetrator threatens her with more violence. But our results suggest something very different,” said Amy Bonomi, lead author of the study and associate professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University.

“Perpetrators are not threatening the victim, but are using more sophisticated emotional appeals designed to minimize their actions and gain the sympathy of the victim. That should change how we work with victims.”

The study appears online in the journal Social Science & Medicine and will appear in a future print edition.

The detention facility in the study routinely records conversations of detainees to increase jail safety. The couples were aware they were being recorded through an automated message at the beginning of each call. Such recordings have been approved by the state Supreme Court, and the researchers gained approval from the county prosecutor’s office to use the recordings. All the recordings involved cases that had already been resolved.

The researchers chose to study victims who had decided to recant. They listened to from 30 to 192 minutes of recorded conversations for each couple.

After analyzing the calls, the researchers identified a five-step process that went from the victims vigorously defending themselves in the phone calls to agreeing to a plan to recant their testimony against the accused abuser.

Typically, in the first and second conversations there is a heated argument between the couple, revolving around the event leading to the abuse charge. In these early conversations, the victim is strong, and resists the accused perpetrator’s account of what happens.

“The victim starts out with a sense of determination and is eager to advocate for herself, but gradually that erodes as the phone calls continue,” said Bonomi, who is also an affiliate with the Group Health Research Institute in Seattle.

In the second stage, the perpetrator minimizes the abuse and tries to convince the victim that what happened wasn’t that serious. In one couple, where the victim suffered strangulation and a severe bite to the face, the accused perpetrator repeatedly reminded the victim that he was being charged with “felony assault,” while asking whether she thought he deserved the felony charge.

“Finally, he wore her down and she agreed with him that he didn’t deserve a felony charge,” Bonomi said.

What happens next in this second stage, though, is the critical step in the process of recantation.

“The tipping point for most victims occurs when the perpetrator appeals to her sympathy, by describing how much he is suffering in jail, how depressed he is, and how much he misses her and their children,” Bonomi said.

“The perpetrator casts himself as the victim, and quite often the real victim responds by trying to soothe and comfort the abuser.”

In one case, the accused perpetrator threatened suicide and said in a phone call to his victim, “Nobody loves me though, right?”

At that point, the victim’s tone changed dramatically, and she sounded concerned that he might actually try to hurt himself, Bonomi said. From then on, the victim promised to help him get out of jail.

In the third stage, after the accused abuser has gained the sympathy of the victim, the couple bonds over their love for each other and positions themselves against others who “don’t understand them.”

The fourth stage involves the perpetrator asking the victim to recant her accusations against him and the victim complying. Finally, in the fifth stage, the couple constructs the recantation plan and develops their stories.

“They often exchange very specific instructions about what should be done and said in court. They seal their bond as a couple and see themselves as fighting together against the state, which they view as trying to keep them apart,” Bonomi said.

While the couples were told that the phone calls were being recorded, Bonomi said she doesn’t believe it had a major effect on what they talked about.

“These are couples in crisis and the perpetrator wants above all to get his freedom. He isn’t holding back,” she said.

Bonomi said she also doesn’t believe the fact that the calls were recorded is what kept the accused perpetrators from threatening violence. Instead, she thinks the men calculated they had a better chance of succeeding if they didn’t make direct threats.

If the accused abuser threatens his girlfriend or wife, she may hang up the phone or refuse to talk to him. Of course, the threat of future violence is always there for these couples, Bonomi said, but the perpetrators didn’t use threats in these calls to achieve their aims.

Bonomi said the results of this study could help prosecutors and other victim advocates as they work with abuse victims in the criminal justice system.

“These results provide a new model for how to work with victims. Advocates can counsel victims up front and let them know the sympathy appeals and minimization techniques that their husband or boyfriend is likely to use on them.

“If the victims are prepared, they may be less likely to fall for these techniques and would be more likely to follow through with the prosecution.”

The results of this study also show how emotion-based techniques of abusers may make it difficult for some victims to disentangle themselves from violent relationships, she said.

Bonomi’s co-authors on the study were Rashmi Gangamma and Heather Katafiasz of Ohio State, Chris Locke of Auburn University and David Martin of the King County (Washington) Prosecutor’s Office.

The study was funded by the Criminal Justice Research Center at Ohio State and the Group Health Foundation of Seattle.

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