Wednesday, December 19, 2007
The guilty plea resolves a seven-year-old rape case.
YOUNGSTOWN — A homeless man is going to prison for five years after a jury convicted him of felonious assault against one woman and he pleaded guilty to the rape of another woman.
Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court imposed the sentence Tuesday on Edward Washington, 46, who was convicted last month of the felonious assault on a 44-year-old homeless woman in a Wick Park area apartment March 24, 2006.
The jury that convicted Washington of the felonious assault acquitted him of kidnapping and raping that woman.
The woman told police Washington punched and kicked her, beat her with a metal rod and a belt with a metal buckle and raped her repeatedly. The defense maintained the only struggle was over the $10 the woman allegedly tried to take from Washington.
Washington pleaded guilty Tuesday to raping a different homeless woman on the city’s near North Side on April 2, 2000, and the prosecution agreed to drop a kidnapping charge in that case.
Charges were initially dismissed in the 2000 case because DNA test results were taking so long for a lab to process that the speedy-trial clock was running out, explained Dawn Krueger, assistant county prosecutor.
Ohio law provides set periods of time within which a defendant must be brought to trial.
But when the new charges were filed in the 2006 case, the DNA found on the victim in the 2000 case was resubmitted to the lab, and it matched Washington’s, causing the 2000 charges to be refiled, she said.
Washington’s lawyer, John Jeffrey Limbian, said the defense maintained the sex was consensual in both cases, but Washington pleaded guilty in the seven-year-old rape case because he risked 20 years in prison had he been tried and convicted as charged in the 2000 case.
Judge Sweeney imposed five years for the 2006 felonious assault and four years for the 2000 rape to be served concurrently.
After he leaves prison, Washington must register as a sexual predator quarterly with the sheriff wherever he resides as long as he lives, Krueger said.