YOUNGSTOWN Child's rapist gets 35 years
The judge would not allow the Himrod Avenue man to take back his guilty plea.
By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Like many others have done before him, William O'Neill Jr. stood before a judge Wednesday and said he didn't mean to do it.
"I wasn't myself that day," O'Neill said, lowering his head and shrugging his shoulders.
He wasn't talking about the multiple counts of rape that landed him in court in the first place. He was talking about his decision in July to plead guilty to half of them.
O'Neill, 42, of Himrod Avenue, told Judge James C. Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court that he wanted to withdraw the guilty plea he had entered two months ago to 11 counts of rape and one count of attempted rape because he didn't fully understand what he was doing at the time.
But Judge Evans refused to allow O'Neill to take back the plea and sentenced him to 35 years in prison, which was recommended in the plea agreement.
The judge said both he and defense attorney Paul Conn spent a considerable amount of time going over the plea agreement with O'Neill in July, and he was satisfied that O'Neill entered the plea knowingly and voluntarily.
Background
A county grand jury indicted O'Neill in February 2002 on 25 counts of rape, each a first-degree felony. Had he gone to trial and been convicted, he could have been sentenced to life in prison.
Dawn Krueger, assistant prosecutor, said O'Neill repeatedly raped a young girl, whom he knew, between September 1999 and September 2001. The girl was 10 when the assaults began.
She said O'Neill blamed the girl, telling authorities that she used to "dirty dance" in front of him. He also told authorities that he fell asleep in the nude once and awoke to find the girl on top of him, having sex with him.
In exchange for his plea of guilty to the 12 counts, prosecutors agreed to dismiss the remaining 13 counts and all of the life-imprisonment specifications.
"Thirty-five years is a life sentence for a man who is 42 years old and in the ill health that my client is," Conn said, noting that three mental evaluations deemed O'Neill "mildly retarded."
Conn said he was shocked that O'Neill accepted the plea agreement in the first place, though he said O'Neill was adamant that he wanted to plead guilty.
O'Neill told the judge that he took the deal because prosecutors had once offered to recommend 20 years in exchange for a guilty plea, which he rejected.
"Then I came in and it was 35 years," O'Neill said, a size XL, orange jail uniform hanging loosely over his thin frame. "I put the brakes on it" before it got higher.
The victim, who was in court with her mother and grandmother, read a prepared statement to O'Neill before he was sentenced.
"You are an evil person and very sick," she said. "I want you to stay in jail forever."
Judge Evans called the rapes "heinous" and "very upsetting."
bjackson@vindy.com