YOUNGSTOWN 2 inmates to get new sentences this week

The two broke into two homes and beat and robbed three people.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Resentencing hearings are scheduled this week and in August for two young men who received 851/2-year prison sentences for two brutal attacks they committed on homeowners Jan. 29, 2001.
The hearings were ordered by the Ohio Supreme Court based on new guidelines set by recent U.S. and Ohio supreme court rulings.
Chad Barnette, an inmate at Trumbull Correctional Institution, will appear at 11 a.m. Tuesday before Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Barnette's accomplice, James Goins Jr., a Mansfield Correctional Institution inmate, is to appear before Judge Krichbaum at 8:30 a.m. Aug. 2.
After their convictions in a jury trial, Judge Krichbaum imposed the 851/2-year sentences on both men in March 2002 on charges of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, kidnapping and receiving stolen property.
Barnette and Goins were 17 at the time they committed the crimes, but they were tried as adults.
Goins and Barnette broke into the Miller Street home of William Sovak, 83, beat and robbed him and left him to die in a locked fruit cellar.
On the same day, the pair broke into the Marmion Avenue home of Louis Luchisan, who used a wheelchair, and his wife, Elizabeth, and beat and robbed them.
New guidelines
Under the new guidelines, the judge is to consider the seriousness of the offenses, including the age and condition of the victims and the amount of harm the victims suffered.
The judge also is to consider the likelihood that the offenders will commit more crimes, based in part on their criminal history, their success, or lack thereof, in rehabilitation, and whether they show genuine remorse.
The Ohio Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional a number of previous criteria in Ohio law concerning imposition of minimum and maximum sentences and concurrent or consecutive sentences.
When sentences for two or more offenses are served at the same time, they are concurrent. When they are served one after the other, they are consecutive.
"Judge Krichbaum acted correctly when he sentenced these guys the first time," said Martin P. Desmond, an assistant county prosecutor. After they were sentenced but while they appealed, the new Supreme Court decisions came about, "which changed what needed to be done at the sentencing hearing," Desmond explained.
Desmond said the new high court decisions will likely cause numerous other convicts to return to trial courts for resentencing.
milliken@vindy.com