D.A. Won’t Prosecute Inmates for Running Up $15,000 Phone Bill

Four inmates who made more than $15,000 worth of unauthorized, international telephone calls at the county’s expense will not be prosecuted for stealing telephone services at the downtown County Jail, officials in the San Diego County district attorney’s office confirmed Tuesday.

Deputy Dist. Atty. A. Craig Rooten said a variety of concerns contributed to the decision not to press charges against accused murderer Billy Ray Waldon and three other inmates from whose cells hundreds of calls were made to China, Switzerland, Puerto Rico and other countries.

Jail accounting records made it impossible to tell which inmate made which phone calls, Rooten said. And, even if that could have been determined, he said, it would have been difficult to prove that the inmates specifically intended to commit a crime.

The hundreds of phone calls, which began in March and ended in early June, were made after inmates discovered a loophole in the county phone system: a dialing pattern beginning with zero that allowed them to bypass local-only calling restrictions.

That loophole has since been corrected, county telecommunications officials say. But, at the time, jail officials--unaware that the phones could be used that way--never thought to forbid inmates to make such calls.

“It was very difficult for us to tell them not to do something that we didn’t know they had a capability of doing,” said Cmdr. Jim Decker of the Sheriff’s Department’s jail investigations unit. “They were using a telephone we allowed them to use. Was a crime committed?”

Rooten said that, in the final analysis, he wasn’t sure he could prove there was.

“To prove theft (of) telephone services, it requires having the intent,” he said. But “no guidelines were ever given to any (of the inmates) regarding the use of any of the phones.”

A further complication was the special status of the four inmates, each of whom had opted to defend himself in court without a lawyer. To prepare their own defenses, these inmates are given two telephones in their cells--one for unlimited free local calling, the other for collect-only long-distance calls. And, because they are acting as their own attorneys, they have the right to confidential phone calls and legal mail.

Rooten said that, in order to not breach that confidentiality, it was decided early that no effort would be made to identify whom the inmates had called.

“When a person is (defending himself), they are in effect a lawyer. So they have the same type of privileges,” he said. Had his office investigated further, he said, it could possibly have created problems as Waldon and the other inmates are prosecuted.

“Here we have a man in jail who is representing himself against serious charges and the D.A. is following up on his phone calls?” Rooten asked hypothetically. “It would have been one of these issues that I would expect an appellate court to address.”

Finally, Rooten said, it was unclear what would have been gained by convicting the inmates. By his estimates, an inmate found guilty of this relatively minor offense would spend from four to eight months more in prison than otherwise. And, if the inmate were ordered to pay restitution, he added, it is unlikely the inmate could foot the bill.

“These aren’t the kind of guys who have assets,” he said. “Let’s say we convicted them, and we get a restitution order. What do they make in prison these days, 52 cents an hour?”

County officials have sought reimbursement for the more than $15,000 in toll calls from AT&T;, whose Alliance Network teleconferencing service was used to make the calls. They allege that the company failed to make the county aware of the service, which they had never requested.

Everett Knox, the deputy director of the county’s Department of Information Services, said Tuesday that AT&T; has so far denied the county’s request.

“The last letter we had from AT&T; (said) they were not going to pay us. They felt they were offering a service, and it was up to us to block it,” he said. An appeal to the Federal Communications Commission is pending, he said.