By Bob Strohm
bstrohm@wbcowqel.com
Common Pleas Court Judge Sean Leuthold presided over a variety of hearings Monday afternoon, including one that resulted in a two-year prison sentence.
Changing his plea to guilty on a felony three burglary charge, 21-year-old Ronald Cress was sentenced to 24 months in prison. The maximum sentence allowed was 36 months. Cress was also ordered to pay court costs and given a permanent fire arms ban.
“You can’t go breaking into people’s houses,” Judge Leuthold said. “You have some time to think about this. When you get out you can either go back to crime and go right back to jail, or you can stay away from crime and lead a productive life.”
In other court news, instead of sentencing Brett Crabtree the judge issued a warrant for his arrest after Crabtree was a no-show at the courthouse. After repeated attempts by his attorney, Timothy O’Leary, to contact Crabtree a warrant was issued for his arrest.
Josh Gottfried had his diversion revoked and was ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $3,649 to Job and Family Services. Gottfried was also sentenced to five years community control and placed in the ISAT program.
As Judge Leuthold read the laundry list of past charges against Gottfried he commented that Gottfried’s time of crime stops now.
“I see a guy who has found a way to slide through the cracks of the justice system,” Judge Leuthold said. It started as a juvenile and continued as an adult. You are acting like a horse’s behind. You skated through a little jail time here, a little there and that stops now. A year from now when we take you off of supervision if you haven’t been able to complete that, or if you go back to crime it will be 12 months in prison.”
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A judicial release was granted to Charles Gardner Monday afternoon. However Gardner wasn’t quite free to go. The judge ordered that Gardner be held at the Crawford County Justice Center until approved for a V.O.A. program.
“If you don’t complete the program you will go back to jail,” Judge Leuthold said. “That means no drugs, no booze, and no hanging out in bars.”
Gardner was placed on community control for five years.
A motion to suppress evidence in the trial of Brooke Bayless was denied and the evidence will be allowed to be used in her upcoming trial. The move to suppress evidence stems from a traffic incident on June 18.
During the traffic stop the Bucyrus Police Department’s drug dog Rosco was used in a search of Bayless’ Mercedes. The traffic stop had two issues according to Bayless’s attorney Adam Stone. The first issue was whether the dog search took place during the stop.
The second issue was a question regarding the reason for the officer to act on suspicion to bring the dog out.
While on the witness stand Lt. R. Thomas Walker explained that he called the dog in to search the vehicle due to the defendant’s lethargic condition, thick tongue, and appearance when answering questions. Walker also noted that he had received intelligence from a Marion County parole officer that phone records had shown there had been contact between Bayless and Nathan Davis, as well as Bayless driving from Marion to Bucyrus.
As a result Lt. Walker called in for Rosco to do a search in which a single pill of Ritalin was discovered. According to Lt. Walker’s testimony after finding the Ritalin pill Bayless proceeded to remove a baggie of marijuana from her groin area.
During the cross examination Stone broke down each of the actions pointing out that the circumstances of the traffic stop shouldn’t have led to a search and that the search based off of a hunch by the police officer is not enough to warrant a search by the police dog.
Judge Leuthold ruled that the evidence secured through the police search was warranted due to all of the different conditions adding up.
“The question of reasonable suspicion, it could be said that it was innocent behavior in each act of itself would not warrant a search, but all of the factors together do,” Leuthold said. “Stone made a good point that a hunch is not probable cause. Now we have to take the intelligence from Marion that the defendant was running with Nathan Davis. There is no doubt drugs coming from Marion, and the defendant had a passenger that was previously arrested for drugs. Those facts are not enough.
“So I have to go with the officer’s testimony lethargic, thick tongue, shutting eyes. All added together could bring in drug dogs. With all the circumstances the officer had reasonable suspicion. Had it been just a traffic stop I would rule in favor of the defense, but with all the evidence the officer acted correctly and the drug dog was within reason.
Matthew Strause pleaded guilty to the felony four charge of handling a firearm in a motor vehicle. As a result Strause must forfeit all drug paraphernalia as well as the 9 mm gun to the Galion Police Department. A pre-sentence investigation was ordered and Strause was released on a personal recognizance bond.