Alford plea sentence upheld on appeal

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

The danger of pleading guilty if you aren’t is now clear to a Van Wert man who entered an unusual plea to a sex-related count late last year, after the Ohio Third District Court of Appeals has upheld a prison sentence handed down in the case.

An opinion written by Judge William Willamowski and filed June 24 affirmed a sentence given to Eric Lehmkuhle in December 2012 on a charge of gross sexual imposition, a felony of the third degree.

Although there is some question of what Lehmkuhle is guilty of — or whether he is guilty at all, after the alleged victim in the case cast doubt on her own accusations — the appellate court judges rejected the man’s assertions that his sentence was not properly handed down.

On November 11, 2011, the Van Wert County Grand Jury indicted Lehmkuhle on seven counts of rape, all felonies of the first degree, as well five third-degree felony counts of gross sexual imposition, and one count of attempted rape, a second-degree felony.

Eventually, all but the one gross sexual imposition charge were dismissed in exchange for Lehmkuhle’s plea to that charge. Instead of pleading guilty or “no contest” to the charge, Lehmkuhle entered an Alford plea on October 31, 2012 , which basically states that, while there was sufficient evidence for a conviction, he maintains that he is not guilty.

“The Alford plea allows me to maintain my innocence, which is the absolute truth,” Lehmkuhle said at his sentencing hearing, while admitting that he made some “errors of judgment” in connection with the alleged victim in the case.

Based on recommendations of a presentence investigation, Van Wert County Common Pleas Judge Charles Steele sentenced Lehmkuhle to 48 months in prison on the gross sexual imposition charge on December 12, 2012, but also gave him credit for 458 days already served while awaiting sentencing.

Both Judge Steele and the alleged victim’s own caretaker expressing reservations regarding the case, which involved a girl who was under the age of 13 at the time of the alleged incident.

“It’s clear that the victim in this case is a troubled girl,” the judge said during Lehmkuhle’s sentencing hearing, while the girl’s caretaker said she seeks attention and doesn’t always understand why she does the things she does.

Lehmkuhle’s attorney in the case, Joseph Benavidez, said he thought the girl concocted her accusation that Lehmkuhle had sex with her to get attention.

The legal issue of the appeal, though, is whether the sentence was properly handed down, and Judge Willamowski affirmed that it was in his decision.

Local attorney Greg Unterbrink, in his appeal of Lehmkuhle’s conviction, cited two assignments of error in the case:

1. The court erred when it imposed the 48-month sentence, when it was not supported by the record on an Alford guilty plea.
2. The court erred in not determining whether the prosecution had sufficient evidence to convict after new evidence in the form of a retraction of the victim’s accusation was received after the acceptance of the Alford plea.

The court rejected the first count, noting that “trial courts have full discretion to impose any sentence” within the statutory range of the charge on which a person is convicted. The appellate court also noted that a presentence investigation recommended that Lehmkuhle be sentenced to 54 months in prison, while the maximum sentence on the charge was 60 months in prison.

Judge Willamowski in his decision did speak to the ambiguities of the case, stating that, while a letter written by the victim in the case did not actually recant her accusations, it did “raise questions about what really happened.”

In rejecting the second assignment of error, the appellate court stressed that Lehmkuhle never asked to withdraw his guilty plea, not did he suggest that the court review the facts of the case a second time.

Judge Willamowski also said that while the girl’s letter, and a letter written by her guardian, cast some doubt on Lehmkuhle’s guilt, neither was, in itself, a reason to overturn the sentence.

“Although the letters were sufficient to cause the trial court to have second thoughts, they, alone, were insufficient to require the court, as a matter of law, to reconsider the plea…” Judge Willamowski said in his opinion.

Judges Stephen Shaw and Vernon Preston concurred in the opinion, although Judge Preston indicated he concurred in judgment only.