By Gary Ogle
gogle@wbcowqel.com
The defense rested in the drug trafficking trial of Jonathan Bagley on Thursday afternoon without calling a single witness. Although he didn’t utter a word in his own defense during the trial, Bagley did speak after a jury found him guilty of two counts of fourth-degree felony drug trafficking.
“Whatever time you do give me, I’m sorry for bringing this to your courtroom, to your county,” Bagley said, still maintaining his innocence. He also offered personal apologies to Crawford County jailer Kent Rachel, Capt. Neil Assenheimer of the Bucyrus Police Department and to his own attorney, Sebastian Berger.
Noting Bagley’s criminal record, as detailed by Assistant Prosecutor Ryan Hoovler during the sentencing phase of the trial, Crawford County Common Pleas Court Judge Sean Leuthold sentenced Bagley to consecutive 15-month prison terms for a total of 30 months. The maximum possible sentence was 18 months on each charge with a potential of 36 months.
Bagley’s misdemeanor and felony records include convictions for resisting arrest, domestic violence, aggravated menacing and drug trafficking for which he was currently on probation. It also came out that a trafficking case against Bagley in Marion had been dismissed because of evidentiary issues around August of 2015, the time frame he was accused of selling drugs to a confidential informant for the Bucyrus Police Department.
Bagley and Berger both asked for consideration in being sent to a facility near his hometown of Columbus to serve his sentences. He will receive credit for the approximately 90 days he was in the county jail until his trial.
The investigation that led to Bagley’s arrest indicated that he would come to Bucyrus from Columbus and sell both heroin and cocaine.
“Well obviously we don’t want people coming into our county selling drugs or doing anything that’s illegal,” County Prosecutor Matthew Crall said. “But it’s important to put that message out there that it’s not conduct that we tolerate.”
Crall went on to commend Hoovler, Assenheimer who led the month’s long investigation and others instrumental in putting the prosecution case together.
Two people did testify on Thursday, both for the prosecution. Hoovler recalled Assenheimer to the stand and then the confidential informant.
Assenheimer’s second time on the witness stand primarily focused on the manner of the photo identification of Bagley. The investigation originally began over information that a man by the street name of JFK from Columbus was selling illegal drugs in Bucyrus.
At issue was that Assenheimer had only shown the confidential informant one photo, not an array of six as prescribed by the Ohio Revised Code.
Assenheimer said the investigation had already revealed to police that Bagley was indeed JFK. However, the confidential informant who said he had purchased drugs from JFK for up to two years prior to the investigation as well as two undercover buys while acting on behalf of police, only knew the man he purchased drugs from as JFK. Assenheimer said the single photo was sufficient because the police were not trying to identify who was selling drugs, but rather trying to confirm that the real identity of JFK was Bagley.
Under both direct and cross examination, the confidential informant admitted to not only using drugs for 18 years and heroin as recently as one week ago, but also to stealing checks from relatives.
Hoovler painstakingly went through the process by which the individual, volunteered to be a confidential informant, set up the drug buys and then purchased heroin from JFK at a house located at 317 S. East St. on Aug. 6 and Aug. 14.
At least three times while on the witness stand, the confidential informant pointed to Bagley and identified him as JFK. During that testimony, Hoovler played an audio tape recording of the Aug. 6 buy and recordings of the informant’s debriefing by police on both Aug. 6 and Aug. 14.
In the Aug. 6 buy recording, JFK could be heard asking the informant, “What you trying to do?” The informant replied, “Boy,” a street term for heroin.
Testimony also described how the informant was let into the darkened house by a woman where JFK was sitting on a couch with a gun pointed at the informant’s head. The informant brought that up again when Berger challenged the informant’s original description of Bagley’s facial tattoos. The informant told police those tattoos were tear drops and a cross or star. Bagley’s facial tattoos include tear drops, but not a star or cross, something that Berger constantly referred to throughout the trial and his closing arguments.
When Berger bore down on the misidentification of tattoo specifics, the informant replied, “No, but when you have a gun at your head when you come into a dark room you can’t . . . .”
When Berger countered that the informant claimed to have purchased drugs from JFK up to 48 times prior to acting as an informant and certainly saw the facial tattoos at the time, the informant replied, “But I wasn’t there to look at his face.”
Following closing arguments by Hoovler and Berger, the jury went into deliberations at 2:10 p.m. The jury rang they had a verdict at 4:17.
Bagley was seated when the decision by the jury of nine women and three men was read, and his face remained emotionless in spite of the verdict that went against him.
In sentencing Bagley, Leuthold told him, “Mr. Bagley, you are one of the most intelligent defendants I’ve ever had in front of me. Selling heroin, selling cocaine is only going to end one way – you are going to wind up in prison or you are going to wind up dead.”
Before Bagley left, the judge wished him luck and a hope that he turned his life around.
The judge also issued the mandatory $2,500 fine and appointed attorney Carlos Crawford to represent Bagley during any appeal.
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