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I need to extract a voice mail, at highest quality for court...

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MadSkillzMan

Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2003
Location
Cleveland OHIO
hi eveyrone, i will give you the backround on a very important situation, and if anyone can answer my question at the end it will help me along greatly in this.

Awhile ago, i was dragged into a fight against some drug addict, and his dirtbag friend instigating the entire situation. They were high and decided to fight me because i cannot see vert well at all. It was a completely unfair fight, because the kid knew my vision was poor and i couldnt see to fight back. So in short i got my nose broken and messed up pretty good. He was 18, i was 17 at the time.

Some of you may wonder what i was doing around them. Me and my girlfriend stopped at a friends house to pickup a horror movie since he collects them as a hobby, and these 2 were there. I can say now we dont talk to any of these people that appeared to be our friends.

So now were trying to get him in court. Hasnt been going well, since the court system is quite corrupt, and his court appointed lawyer somehow gets a delay on every pretrial. This was supposed to be over March 23rd, after it happened march 6th when he was arrested. He managed to get a delay on may 13th, and then a bench trial. Supposed to have finished everything up on june 21st, but he got a delay til july 15th. Its rather aggervating, i dont want nothing like this hanging over my head.

Even funnier, he accused me of drinking and doing drugs, when ive never done such a thing in my life.

This kid messed up, not only in the fact that everyone is testifying against him, not only that hes making false acusations against me, but he got drunk last weekend and called my girlfriends cell phone. She couldnt understand him, as it was 3am and she was asleep. She asked "who is this?" she couldnt understand so she just hung up.

They called back 1 minute later leaving a rather threatening message, and its undoubtedly their voices. They were so drunk, they couldnt figure out if they hung the phone up or not. You here one girl say "did you delete it? did you hang up yet?" and they left some call back number which isnt theirs.

So of corse we want to use this in court against them. What id like to know is how do i get it off of my girlfriends phone at highest quality? She doesnt have a headset or a link to plug into PC. Its an older Nokia phone.

I was thinking hook up a mic to my mixer and recording it that way to my PC, but it comes out distorted and you cannot hear everything as clearly, even after i apply filters to remove noise.

Some how i get higher quality when i record to my reel to reel setup from my mixer. If worse came to worse we could just use that, and/or her cell phone in court, but im wondering if theres another way.

My friend can extract calls and voice mails to his PC with some link he got with his brand new fancy phone. I was wondering if there was a way he could get the mail from her phone and put it on his pc, then i could put it to tape/CD etc..

Help me out here guys, i have no clue how to work cell phones. Alls i know is the old analoge phone taps that stick to the back dont work on cell phones. I guess if i was desparate enough we could order a headphone for its odd plug and splice the wires and make my own adaptor for it...

THanks in advance guys. Any questions about the situation let me know.
Sry mods if this is too detailed. Ill edit if need be.
 
well, to first answer your question, to get the best quality recording you will need to obtain it from the cell provider, which can be done. However, it may difficult. If it is your girlfriends phone, she should call the cell provider and request a hard copy of the voice mail. The cell provider may or may not cooperate. If so, great! If not, you will need to file suit against the cell company to have the court supena them into releasing the voice message to you. This can be a quite complicated and drawn out process.

The other option would be obtaining from the phone its self, however, the recording is going to be very staticy, with the possiblity of not being able to make out voices. The hard copy is going to be your best bet, due to the fact it will be time stamped as well as the phone number the call originated from.

Once you have the copy, your next challenge is convincing the court to actually use it as evidence. Is this a civil or criminal trial? Are you suing him? Or is this so you can turn it over to athorities for threats? If for turning over to the police, you should just go to the police station, have them listen to the message and file a report, and let them handle the above steps. Hope that helps you out.
 
Don't try to extract it. On your computer or RTR deck his attorney can argue that it was modified or faked. If the court does not have some type of amplification you can bring a guitar amp or something similar iwth you and play it right from the phone.

To be honest, it probably does not matter as it sounds like you have plenty on him already. Then too, if they were that drunk all that the recording proves is that they are sloppy drunks and it really is not relevant to the case beyond establishing character. But FWIIW, Just bringing an amp and telling the judge that you are prepared to do this speaks to what scumbags they are.
 
check with the company you have your cell phone plan with. i know with mine all voicemails get deleted after like 2 weeks. wether they are checked or not.
 
hmm, thank you very much that helps easily. I have a small amp and i could probably borrow my freinds tiny practice....

Your right i probably dont need it, but i want to bring it up anyway since theyre trying every which way to appear that theyre right. I mean, they open up saying that i started the fight. How much sense would it make for a guy whos legally blind to start a fight he knows he cant win right off the bat?

Thank you tho, i talked it over with my dad and the proc....very good idea with the non computer thing.
 
You could probably call your phone company and request a copy or transcription of the call. Cops do it all of the time on TV so you can probably do something similar.
 
Usually recordings are not allowed in court, but since he left a message on your answering machine, he knew he was being recorded and its admissible in court.

First it's not the court being corrupt in the delays, its the defense thats asking for these delay motions and dalays are very common.

Not sure how you can clarify the recordings, but I suggest you leave them as is so the defence cannot say they have been doctored or manipulated.

You can do a couple more things that are very optional but would help you in this case.

Number 1 is get a restraining order for both you and your Girlfriend, and second if this moron is accusing you of being a drug user and your not, go to a family walk in clinic and tell the doctor you need to prove you dont use drugs. He will order either a simple urinalysis or some sort of gas spectroscopy test. A simple urinalysis isn't expensive for a lab to run, probably $65 to $100


Good luck and don't get discouraged.
 
haha oh im not i got advice from the famous SSS...

Yea i posted a reply last nite but obvoiusly it didnt post...

I will probably just show up with an amp and mic...can borrow a small practice amp from my friend since mine is one of those large ones..

Also the restraining order is a good idea, since him and his accomplace will mess with my girlfriend since she lives a few streets away, and i live about 15minutes a way. The nite this happened, we wer followed almost all the way back to my house from the police station by what we beleive was the guys father. For once i didnt have my beloved video camera so we cannot prove it. We lost the guy tho so still they do no know our whereabouts.

The reason i said the system was corrupt, was because the night this happened, the cop accoused me of lying. He got in my face, kept tellin me to stop lying or im going to be charged with purgery. We couldnt understand what was up with this. The cop called his house, and the guy laughed and hung up. The cop went over there, arrested him withouot a warrant from us (so wer pretty sure it was for his drugs)...first the cop was on our side, then turned against us.

They kept mailing my subpoena to the house at which it happened at. The kids mother there, would open OUR MAIL and tell the defense whats up, then she'd call my gf and go "oh your boyfriend has mail". It was titled to my father, because i was 17 when this took place. Shes done this 3 times already, finally after calling city hall 5 times we THINK they got the addresses right.

Thanks alot for the help guys. I really appreciate it.
 
Sounds to me like you have him in a pretty nice position. I'd take Sam's advice and get that proof you dont do drugs. Go to court and smack that evidence right on that table. Be able to contradict everything they accuse you of with proof...Then accuse them with proof.

Use the phone call they gave your girlfriend to get a restraining order.

Good luck in court.
 
THank you, and currently i need it. The key witness, who watched the guy who hit me, buy drugs from his friend to just instigated the situation, is now against us. She found out the guy who instigated left the call, and she always had some crush on him. So shes trying everything in her power to make us not go through with showing the call to court. The call is obviously this kid, because it not only is his voice, but he has this accent no one can mimic. She keeps telling me im going to look sutpid in court, she knows who it was, but wont say because of a promise and that it would start more problems...basically some more teen girl BS. We know who it was, theres no question about it, i mean he opened the call with "U know who the F this is..."

Its bad because now, the only witness whos truly on my side is my girlfriend, and that wont look good, since they could argue that what she saw is in my favor just because shes with me. This other girl, would now have to lie against her statement to get the guy off the hook, is not only going to get her in trouble (which she deserves) but will make us look bad.

Everyone else only sides with these dirt bags because they provide them with drugs.

Cant wait til all this is over. For one, if all goes well justice will be served, and i wont have to keep worrying about it.

It has let us see who our real freinds are, never knew most of them wer into this kind of $h**, and ive got to say im thankful im not a part of that. Heh, finally being a decent guy all my life is gonna pay off.

They were arguing originally the reality of my disability. Within a week we had letters from a lady from the cleveland site center, my optomatrist of my entire life, and this world famous guy Dr. Deloso that studied me and my bro once...

Thanks for the replies guys. I see the "hiccup" in this part of the forum has been fixed after i asked about it. Thanks mods!
 
well guys its over. Woulda posted sooner, ended july 15th.

The main girl that saw some important things lied to us, and never made a police statement and avoided court, and she knew who made the prank call. Things would have gone much sweeter had she come, but she didnt.

Only the kid who hit me got in trouble. He has 1 year active probation. I don know what that means but i thought it had somehting to do with drug testing, which would be funny since hes been smoking up until the day before court. He has an 816$ fine to pay by october first, Also he can never work a job around children, healthcare, financial stuff...he can NEVER become a manager, he cant even keep his job at mcdonalds because this is an act of violence on his record. He also, has to do 150 hours of community service at the cleveland sight center. Thats even funnier because the people there have vision way better than me, but theyre like so helpless. It drives me crazy just being around them.

In court, they all had different stories. The judge got mad at them. THey kept saying i attacked this guy, that i came after him and wouldnt stop. One kid claimed i never got hit, and the cop got all in his face asking how the heck i got all the bruises. The one who hit me claimed he never met me before and that he didnt know i couldnt see. Cop and my girlfriend got on his case right then and there. Afterwards, the judge told me that i have the right to a civil case. A few days later we got a call from some lawyer saying that the judge was pretty much hinting to go ahead and sue him.

He should have gone to jail for 6 months, but my dad didnt want that. I was 17 when this happened, so my dad had to be present. But atleast i know this way, he will have troubles the rest of his life. We are thinking of persuing the civil case for all the crap i had to put up with after this. Also the one jerk continues to ring our phone at 4am. Im trying to find a program that answers the phone through my modem, then dials *57 once they hang up. None of my friends or family are gonna call the phone at 4am. THeyd IM me first or call a cell phone.

I appreciate the help guys and thought id let u all know how it went.
 
MadSkillzMan said:
Also the one jerk continues to ring our phone at 4am. Im trying to find a program that answers the phone through my modem, then dials *57 once they hang up. None of my friends or family are gonna call the phone at 4am. THeyd IM me first or call a cell phone.

I appreciate the help guys and thought id let u all know how it went.

You can persue the civil case if you want. Persoanlly I would do it. I have a big thing against ********, Parden my laungage.

As for the guy calling at 4 am. Pick up the phone one night and not matter what he says or anything, dont stop to listen to him say in these exact words, "Please do not call my house or this telephone number again." You have to be polite and specify your house and that number.

After that if he calls again it's fair game. call the phone company. There is a number, I think it is *57 here too, that copies the number number from the last person who called to your phone bill. Even if the number is a private number it will show on your phone bill.

Also go to radio shack and get a tape recorder with phone line inputs. It's about 30 dollars in change. As soon as the person calls again ignore him and say over top of him that he is being recorded. That way if he chosses to keep speaking he can't argue he didnt know and it's completly legal and court admissiable for evidence.

After you have done this file a restraining order against the kid and press charges for crimnilistic threats and stalking and harrasment. All three can be applied to this case. With the number shown on your phone bill with it timestamped and the tape with his voice being heard it is an easy case that he will get prosecuted. Its a minimum of a couple years of probabtion or jail time. Also with repeated offences it obviously goes up. Good luck!
 
LOL thats the most info on *57 ive ever gotten. we wer told once it sent it stright to the police, and one time it did. Someone took my girlfriends phone and made abunch of calls. When she got home there was a police car waiting for her. We had to explain the phone was stolen and all this.

Oh these kids do it while theyre drunk. Theyll leave voice mails and messges, where it flatout states "please fecord your message". So im sure if we state loudly its being recorded theyll continue. I was thinking of setting it up having my computer do it all. After first call, state "do not call this number again", then any call after that state "You are being recorded" then *57. I know there are some autodialers/answer programs that can help me with this. I leave a PC on all nite anyways. In my house, we have one phone line.Theres a phone in my room, and one downstairs in the kitchen. ONe of my parents sleeps downstairs and neither of us appreciate them calling and ringing the phone like htis. We need it on around 7-8am because of horse business.
 
On your issue of bieng called:
Try this number... 614-466-8360 It is Jim Petro's number (State of Ohio Office of the Attorney General) The address is: 150 E. Gay St., 21st FL Columbus Ohio 43215
That office should have the best advice how to deal with your issue and tell you what is legal and ask if they can file charges agianst the caller(s). They do a great job there. I had to call them before and they are a real help in legal matters. Good luck and may your troubles pass soon.
Oh edit, the e addy is www.ag.state.oh.us
 
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