Year added to sentence for abuse of a corpse

The victim was shot three times at close range.

YOUNGSTOWN — A murderer got an additional year tacked onto his prison sentence for abuse of a corpse during a resentencing hearing in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

Dustin Phipps, 22, of Moyer Avenue, Boardman, drew the extra prison time Tuesday from Judge Maureen A. Sweeney after the 7th District Court of Appeals ordered the resentencing on the abuse of a corpse charge.

The appellate court said Judge Charles J. Bannon erred in 2004 by failing to state on the court record his reasoning behind the 11-month sentence he imposed for the abuse of a corpse. Judge Bannon had made that sentence concurrent with a mandatory 15-years-to-life sentence for the Feb. 28, 2002, murder of Adam T. Dixon, 18, of Boardman.

After Phipps was bound over from juvenile court for trial as an adult and convicted by a jury, Judge Bannon also imposed a mandatory consecutive three-year prison term for the gun specification.

Authorities said Phipps, who was 16 when he committed the crimes, shot Dixon with a .22-caliber rifle three times in the head at close range after an argument in a West Boston Avenue apartment, and then he and another juvenile took the body by car to Lowellville and dumped it into the Mahoning River.

Saying Phipps had no incarceration record before the slaying, Phipps’ lawyer, John B. Juhasz, told Judge Sweeney he thought it would be improper to impose any consecutive time for abuse of a corpse.

But Robert Andrews, assistant county prosecutor, successfully urged the judge to add a consecutive year to Phipps’ prison term. “I believe that this is the worst form of abuse of a corpse,” Andrews said.