IN COURT — Samuel Hall (right) and his attorney Charles Strader listen in Jefferson County Common Pleas Court on Wednesday. – Linda Harris

STEUBENVILLE – Steubenville Police dispatchers Karen Chociej and Jackie Hines were not particularly impressed by the apologies.

Samuel Hall, the South Carolina man who made 7,347 calls to city police in less than two months filled with obscenities and profanity, had just told the court: “I misunderstood and I’m sorry.”

“I completely misunderstood that,” repeated the 50-year-old. “(But) I never tried to hide my identity. I won’t call again.”

Hall was found guilty on Tuesday of 21 counts of disrupting public service – three of the calls involved actual threats of violence against dispatchers, officers and their families. On Wednesday, he was back in Jefferson County Common Pleas Court for sentencing and tried to convince Judge Joseph Bruzzese not to send him to jail.

But after hearing the victims’ testimony and prosecutor Jane Hanlin’s summary of Hall’s previous convictions, Bruzzese sentenced Hall to one and a half years in prison for each of the three calls threatening violence, to be served consecutively with credit for time already served.

Bruzzese said Hall “What he did was terrible.”

“It is clear from the phone conversations that he loved his work,” said Bruzzese. “I mean, he really enjoyed taunting them: ‘Come and get me. You don’t have the strength to get me.'”

He also pointed to the numerous ethnic, racial and religious insults that Hall had hurled at the city’s dispatchers, noting that he appeared to have attacked dispatcher Joe Mastroianni with his worst profanities. “He used the N-word and then called him a cracker in the same conversation,” said Bruzzese. “It’s inconsistent, maybe he just vomited the stuff out, but it was awful to listen to him.”

Chociej said Bruzzese Hall, “a despicable person” and called him “a nightmare.”

“Thank you for the apology, but you don’t understand” she said, staring at her. “You made my life hell all those months of calling and disrupting service. I had to protect patrol officers in the field, they were on important missions – you interrupted all of that… I had nightmares. I would come to work and get physically ill on the way there. I prayed that everyone was safe during that time because you did what you did. It wasn’t fair to me. I didn’t know you. You had no right to say the things you said.”

Chociej also told Hall that “The things you would say were never told to me.”

“Nobody has ever spoken to me like that, and I have been there for almost 25 years,” she said. “You had no reason to do that. You kept going even when I told you to stop. You have no idea what my job entails. You don’t know what I’ve been through. You just can’t understand that. For you to sit here and say you don’t think you should go to jail – I’m sorry. I don’t agree with that.”

Hines said Hall’s tirades were “It was gross and just horrible. He called us horrible names, he talked about our nationalities in this way, he talked about the color of our skin and he talked about people of color in this way.”

“All these things were terrible, they were outrageous and it was hard for all of us to listen to them,” Hines told the court: “The fact that his attorney talked about how we made no mistakes during that time just speaks to the professionalism of the people I work with. It speaks to the true dedication we have to our jobs. It speaks to the chief and the supervisors that we need to make sure we are properly trained to handle these situations in the best way possible. (But) that doesn’t mean he didn’t impact us in any way, it doesn’t mean the citizens we serve weren’t impacted – we don’t know if we missed a call. We don’t know if someone tried to call and didn’t get through at a certain time. There’s no way to know.”

In closing, Hines told Bruzzese: “There is no excuse for what he did to this community… what he did to this community, to the people who work here and to the people who live here is inexcusable and he should go to prison.”

Hanlin argued that Hall’s previous convictions warranted a prison sentence and that the sentences should be served consecutively rather than concurrently: In 2002, she said, Hall was convicted of attempted false imprisonment in North Carolina and sentenced to 13 to 16 months in prison, followed by 36 months of probation. She violated those probation terms in 2005, when she was convicted of theft and resisting arrest, also in North Carolina.

She said he was also convicted in Florida for providing a false name (2011) and marijuana possession (2022). He was also convicted twice in South Carolina and once in North Carolina for driving while license suspended, she said.

“He brags about all the other jurisdictions where he has done this, South Carolina, Medina, Indiana,” she had told the judge. “Whoever he’s angry at, even if it’s just a news story in this state, he believes he has the right to harass, berate, and disrupt the police and their work because that’s what he wants to do.”

Hanlin said Steubenville police came into his crosshairs when they were asked by Massachusetts authorities to check a property in Buena Vista linked to him, even though body camera footage showed officers “He was consistently polite to (his) family. There were no arrests, no doors were kicked in. There were no abusive comments from the police, they were consistently polite to his family. There was no provocation whatsoever and there is nothing that would mitigate the actions of this defendant.”

She said Hall had shown “no real remorse” and claims that he believes he “has the absolute right to call the police whenever he wants, and according to him, they have to sit there and take it, and they have to listen to him, because otherwise they are somehow violating his rights if they don’t sit there and take his abuse for eight hours.”

“While calling the Steubenville police, he threatened to use a gun,” she added. “On November 12, 2022, he informed the dispatcher that “He would send someone to their death and shoot someone else in the face.’ Then, on November 18, 2022, he said he would “Write down all your names and stand in front of your houses with weapons.” On November 19, 2022, he said: “Next time you see me there will be a shootout.”

“If he had done that for maybe two or three days because he was upset about the first call, I think they would be able to handle it,” Said Hanlin. “I think they’re constantly taking calls from angry citizens and just keep going, but non-stop from November to January without ever getting a break from the harassment. It’s not like he had a brief lapse – he boasted about “People have to endure it for 60 days and there’s not a damn thing they can do about it.”

Hall told the judge he had a “severe drug addiction” in 2002, when he was charged and convicted of attempted deprivation of liberty.

“I have overcome that,” he said. “And since then, I’ve bought a house and kept my job. I had a problem driving in 2022, yes… I’ve done my best not to do the things I’ve done in the past.”

Defense attorney Charles Strader said Hall will appeal, although he will not represent him, and did not give reasons for the appeal. He also expressed concern that Hall could reoffend if he does not serve his sentence. “are purely speculative.”

“Of course we understand the verdict that the court has reached … and of course Mr Hall is exercising his right to appeal the conviction in this matter,” said Strader.

He said they had to “See what the Court of Appeal has to say” about whether the conviction violates Hall’s right to free speech.

While other jurisdictions, including the federal government, have refrained from prosecuting for these same reasons, Hanlin said the Ohio Revised Code specifically prohibits anyone from disrupting public services.

“It is possible that their statutes are different from ours,” she said. “I took this case at the request of the Steubenville Police Department after they were unsuccessful in getting federal authorities involved. They were overwhelmed with the number of calls and interruptions, and the defendant had indicated he would never stop. He was calling so often that the system was crashing, and at that point it just wasn’t fair to our officers and dispatchers to keep it going any longer.”