Photo by Gage Vota Andrew Isaac Griffin appears in Belmont County Common Pleas Court for pre-trial hearing.

ST. CLAIRSVILLE – Andrew Isaac Griffin, who is accused of murdering his Salsa Joe’s Restaurant business partner, Thomas Strussion, and his wife, Angela Strussion, appeared in front of Belmont County Common Pleas Court Judge Chris Berhalter on Friday afternoon.

Berhalter ruled that any and all motions that either party deems necessary must be filed by July 31.

During the hearing, Berhalter asked Belmont County Prosecutor Kevin Flanagan and Griffin’s attorney, Kate Clark of the Samuel H. Shamansky Law Office, whether either side had concerns about keeping the Oct. 19 court date.

Both agreed the date is sufficient.

Berhalter said the state has two outstanding motions: one to introduce a deposition at trial and another regarding authentication.

He asked Flanagan whether the state’s motion covers social media sites in addition to phone records.

“Our position is that it does, in fact, cover social media sites. A couple of things, though: With the two social media sites that we referenced [Facebook and Snapchat], I think that what ultimately the state of Ohio would be relying on with social media sites would be admission of a party opponent, which is absolutely different,” Flanagan said. “We asked for the call detail records to be self-authenticating, given the business record certification that was provided. So even if we do not call a witness relative to social media, either for Snapchat or Facebook, we believe those records come in under admission of a party opponent.”

Flanagan noted that Clark previously logged an objection to multiple cell phone carriers.

“One of the things that we indicated to her is that the main carrier in this particular case is AT&T. That entity, we will have a witness here for,” Flanagan said. “If the court wants to strike that from the state’s motion, we’re not going to argue against that, because there are things relative to the AT&T records that we believe we’re going to need a person from the company to come in and testify to.”

Berhalter asked Flanagan to supplement the state’s motion, specifying what evidence he believes is self-authenticating and what evidence would be admitted as a party opponent.

He gave Flanagan a 14-day time frame to supplement the motion.

The discussion also turned to the possibility of introducing an unnamed witness’ deposition at trial.

The trial deposition was previously conducted due to the witness having a serious health condition.

“I don’t want to get too far into that individual’s medical issues, but the basis of the motion was that he may be unavailable to testify. Do you have any information as to his status?” Berhalter asked.

During the previous pretrial, the state asked the court to rule on whether it would allow the deposition of the witness.

“It is our understanding that the condition of the witness has not gotten better,” Flanagan said. “The concern at the time that we asked was whether or not the witness would be available or not and whether the illness that the witness still suffers from would have such a debilitating effect on him that he would not travel. It is also our understanding that it could affect his lifespan as well, and that’s why we asked the court to do the deposition at that time.”

Berhalter said he will rule on the matter at a later date but may request additional information.

He set the pretrial for May 1 at 1:30 p.m. in Common Pleas Court.