84-year prison sentence

The judge cut 18 months off the original 851/2-year prison sentence.
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
YOUNGSTOWN -- An attorney with the Mahoning County prosecutor's office expressed satisfaction with the new prison sentence imposed on a young man convicted in two home invasions.
"It's completely appropriate for the crimes here," said Timothy Franken, chief of the criminal division of the county prosecutor's office, after Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge R. Scott Krichbaum imposed an 84-year prison term on Chad Barnette for the brutal attacks Jan. 29, 2001.
"These were elderly people who were assaulted in their own homes," Franken said. "If we can't be safe in our own homes, we've got nowhere else to go. And if we can't protect our elderly as well as our young, we're not much of a society," Franken added.
Barnette, an inmate at the Trumbull Correctional Institution, appeared for re-sentencing Tuesday. His accomplice, James Goins Jr., a Mansfield Correctional Institution inmate, will appear before the judge for re-sentencing at 8:30 a.m. next Wednesday. Judge Krichbaum gave both men maximum consecutive sentences totaling 851/2 years in prison in 2002 after a jury convicted them of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, kidnapping and receiving stolen property. Higher court order
The Ohio Supreme Court reversed 7th District Court of Appeals decisions that reduced the sentences for both men to 74 years, and the state's highest court ordered the defendants sent back to Judge Krichbaum for re-sentencing under new U.S. and Ohio supreme court guidelines.
Judge Krichbaum reduced Barnette's sentence Tuesday to 84 years by merging a receiving stolen property charge, for which he had originally sentenced Barnette to 18 months, with a robbery charge, as directed by the 7th District Court of Appeals.
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.
Barnette and Goins were 17 at the time they committed the crimes, but they were tried as adults.
At the re-sentencing hearing, Judge Krichbaum said the crimes were "an unpleasant reminder of man's inhumanity to man."
Barnette's lawyer, Ron Yarwood, said his client objected to the imposition of maximum or consecutive sentences.
Yarwood said that Barnette did not appear to have so extensive a juvenile criminal record that he couldn't be rehabilitated and that he is still a young man.
The judge cited Barnette's prior juvenile arrest record for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, failure to appear in court, shoplifting, resisting an officer, battery, vehicle theft, grand larceny, and possession of burglary tools, but said the dispositions of those cases are unknown.
Chastising the defendant
"You're somebody who is a menace to society," Judge Krichbaum told Barnette, adding that he wants to make sure Barnette never gets out of prison. "You're going to do 84 years. There's no early release," the judge told Barnette. "I'd give you more [time in prison] if I could," under state law, the judge said.
"I thank the good Lord every night that I can't imagine somebody doing to another human being what you did to these people," the judge told Barnette.
"If ever there was a case where maximum sentences were deserved, he brought it upon himself. I just did what any judge should do in a situation like this," the judge told Yarwood.
When Barnette attempted to address the judge at the end of the re-sentencing hearing, the judge told him it wasn't the appropriate time for him to speak and that he had been given a chance to speak earlier, but declined to do so.
The judge warned Barnette that, if he didn't keep quiet, he'd be facing an additional sentence for contempt of court.
"I want him out of here right now, and, if he makes any more noise, I want you to bring him back to me," the judge told deputies, who escorted Barnette out of the courtroom.