By Gary Ogle
gogle@wbcowqel.com
The real impact on victims of domestic violence was intensely evident Thursday morning in Crawford County Common Pleas Court during Timothy Woods’ plea hearing.
Already on community control as a result of a felony criminal non-support conviction, Woods admitted to violating his probation and pleaded guilty to the additional charge of felony 3 domestic violence.
Judge Sean Leuthold accepted the plea agreement between Woods and the Prosecutor’s Office and sentenced him to 12 months in prison on the new charge and 12 more months on the original non-support conviction.
The judge ordered that the sentences run consecutively for a total of 24 months in prison for Woods. Woods never moved or looked up from the table during the entire proceeding other than to speak the single words “admit” and “guilty” during the plea portion of the hearing.
Woods, who is 42, could only sit and listen while the victim of his crime attempted to read a prepared victim’s impact statement with a deputy and court officials separating the victim and defendant at the judge’s request.
“I hope what you did was well worth it. I hope you never see daylight again,” the victim read before being overwhelmed by emotion and handing the statement to the judge to finish.
Leuthold read the statement silently at first and before reading it out loud, turned his attention to the victim.
“This is very disturbing,” the judge said, and then spent most of the balance of the hearing addressing the victim. “I do not want you to blame yourself in any way, shape or form.”
Upon his release, Woods will be subject to a period of three years on mandatory post-release control.