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Judges reject appeal from man who used 92-year-old woman's credit cards in spending spree

JESSICA SHAMBAUGH
Special to the Legal News

Published: September 16, 2014

The 12th District Court of Appeals recently affirmed several convictions for a man who stole an elderly woman’s credit cards and used them to purchase $1,600 worth of merchandise from a Fayette County Walmart.

Jason Calhoun was arrested and charged after police found him leaving a Walmart store with a 92-year-old woman’s credit cards.

During a jury trial in the Fayette County Court of Common Pleas, the state presented evidence that Calhoun took the credit cards and several large-scale electronics from the woman’s home after he broke in on Jan. 3, 2013.

The woman, Jane Dill, said she fell asleep around 10 p.m. that night but found the items missing and a broken kitchen window when she woke up.

One of her neighbors also discovered a broken window and damaged window screens on his home. Nothing was taken from that residence, however.

A third house in the neighborhood was also broken into and blood found in the home was later tested and proved to match Calhoun’s DNA.

A few hours after the break-ins, A Murphy USA gas station clerk sold two cartons of cigarettes to a man who used Dill’s credit card.

The man signed the credit card slip “Jason Calhoun” but then asked for it back, scratched out his signature and replaced it with an illegible scribble. The man then left the gas station with two women in a taxi.

Shortly thereafter, a Walmart cashier saw Calhoun and two women enter her store.

She said they made a “test purchase” of three sodas to make sure the credit card would work then approached the jewelry counter.

The trio ultimately returned to the cashier to purchase jewelry, cellphones and a Galaxy tablet.

The items came to a total of $1,600 and Calhoun handed the cashier Dill’s credit card.

The cashier ran the card and charged the bill to it. After the amount was debited to the account, the system prompted the cashier to check Calhoun’s I.D.

The license he provided had the name Jason Calhoun, which did not match the name on Dill’s credit card.

Calhoun explained that Dill was his mother and gave him the card to purchase Christmas presents for himself and his friends.

The cashier called for assistance and a manager took the items to be returned at the customer service desk.

She then phoned the police and saw Calhoun and the women exit the store and enter a taxi.

When Officer Jeff Heinz arrived on the scene, he stopped the taxi as it started to leave the parking lot.

Heinz questioned Calhoun and the women and found Dill’s credit cards and a few cartons of cigarettes in the car.

The state also presented evidence that the tread on Calhoun’s shoes matched the shoe prints at one of the burglarized homes and that his DNA was consistent with blood found on a rock and a jewelry box in another of the homes.

The jury found Calhoun guilty of forgery, receiving stolen property, misuse of credit cards with an elderly-victim specification, breaking and entering, burglary and theft.

The trial court sentenced him to an aggregate term of 10 years in prison for those offenses.

On direct appeal, Calhoun first argued that the trial court erred by denying his motion for a continuance filed on the first morning of trial.

He claimed he needed that extra time to summon witnesses to testify on his behalf.

“Here, the trial court did not abuse its discretion by denying appellant’s motion for a continuance since it was made on the morning of trial and the two cases on which appellant was being tried had been pending for approximately two months, one of appellant’s victims was 92 years old, appellant’s attorney previously represented to the trial court that there was no further reciprocal discovery needed, and appellant failed to proffer the names of the witnesses whose testimony he sought to present and explain how they would assist his defense,” Judge Robert Hendrickson wrote on behalf of the three-judge appellate panel.

Calhoun next asserted that the state failed to provide sufficient evidence that he misused credit cards at Walmart because his purchase was declined.

Upon review, however, the appellate panel determined that the cost was debited to Dill’s account before the cashier asked for Calhoun’s I.D.

Therefore, he had already committed the offense before the manager returned the items and refunded the amount to the card.

Based on that information, the judges rejected his second assignment of error.

Calhoun also challenged the evidence supporting his misuse of credit cards at the gas station because the state did not provide testimony from the cashier that would identify him as the purchaser of the cigarettes.

Again, the judges were unpersuaded by Calhoun’s argument.

They found that even though the cashier did not identify Calhoun, there was ample circumstantial evidence including his scratched out signature on the receipt and Heinz later finding the cigarettes in a cab with Calhoun.

“There were two cartons of cigarettes found in the taxi cab that matched the ones sold that night at Murphy USA gas station to the man who signed his name ‘Jason Calhoun,’ then scratched out that signature and replaced it with a scribble,” Hendrickson stated.

After overruling each of Calhoun’s assignments of error, Presiding Judge Robert Ringland and Judge Stephen Powell joined Judge Hendrickson in affirming the lower court’s judgment.

The case is cited State v. Calhoun, 2014-Ohio-3662.

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