Man who settled suit is heading back to prison

The parole violations
pertained to having access to a gun and drug
paraphernalia.

By PETER H. MILLIKEN

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

YOUNGSTOWN — A man who received a lawsuit settlement from Mahoning County after having been twice beaten by county deputy sheriffs while he was a jail inmate is going back to state prison to finish the 11 months remaining in his manslaughter and felonious-assault sentence.

On Friday, Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court revoked Tawhon Easterly’s parole and sent him back to the penitentiary.

The Ohio Adult Parole Authority said Easterly, 29, violated terms of his parole on Jan. 9 by having access to a firearm, gun magazines, ammunition and drug paraphernalia police said they found in his Manhattan Avenue residence and failing to report his contact with police that day to his parole officer.

Easterly arrived home while police, who had arrested his brother, Frederick, who also resides there, and searched the residence, were still present, said Robert Andrews, assistant county prosecutor. Whether Tawhon Easterly owned the gun and drug paraphernalia or not, it was a parole violation for him to reside in a home where these items were present, Andrews said.

Frederick T. Easterly, 25, was arrested on an attempted-murder charge in the Jan. 6, 2008, shooting of Godfrey L. Gurley, 27, of Cumberland Circle in Austintown. Gurley was shot in the neck and back after a man followed him into his apartment and opened fire, a witness told police. Police said they were unsure of the motive.

In December 2006, the county’s insurance consortium issued a $65,000 check, jointly payable to Tawhon Easterly and his lawyer, as a settlement for state and federal lawsuits Easterly had filed concerning the beatings he had received Dec. 28, 2001, while he was a pretrial detainee.

Former Maj. Michael J. Budd and seven other former sheriff’s deputies were named as defendants in those lawsuits, in which Easterly alleged deputies assaulted him after he was identified as having hit a female deputy.

Tawhon Easterly signed the lawsuit settlement agreement on the same day Judge Sweeney granted him judicial release from state prison, where he was 11 months away from completing a nine-year sentence on involuntary manslaughter and felonious-assault charges with firearm specifications.

Those charges stemmed from the October 1998 slaying of Clinton Longmire III, 18, of Elm Street, who was shot in his car on Martin Luther King Boulevard. The felonious-assault charges stemmed from the wounding of three other men in the car.

When she released him on five years’ parole, Judge Sweeney warned him she’d send him back to prison to serve the balance of his sentence if he violated the terms of his parole.