Court rejects appeal of 84-year sentence

The appellate court decision is left intact.

COLUMBUS — The Ohio Supreme Court has declined to review an appeal from a defendant who was sentenced to 84 years in prison after he invaded the home of an 83-year-old Youngstown man, beat and robbed him and left him to die in his locked fruit cellar.

The high court announced Wednesday it wouldn’t consider the case of James Goins, who appealed a unanimous 7th District Court of Appeals decision that upheld the sentence imposed on Goins by Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

The high court’s refusal to consider the case means the 7th District decision prevails, and the sentence is left intact.

The victim, William Sovak, lived the rest of his life in a nursing home and died after the jury trial.

Goins and an accomplice broke into the Marmion Avenue home of Louis Luchisan, who used a wheelchair, and his wife, Elizabeth, and beat and robbed them.

The jury convicted Goins and the accomplice, Chad Barnette, both 17 at the time of the Jan. 29, 2001, crimes, of attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, kidnapping and receiving stolen property.

Goins, of the Mansfield Correctional Institution, unsuccessfully argued that the maximum consecutive prison terms Judge Krichbaum imposed were unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

In May, the state’s top court also dismissed an appeal from Barnette, of Trumbull Correctional Institution, who is also serving an 84-year prison term, because the top court said the appeal didn’t involve any substantial constitutional questions.

In another case it decided in May, the Ohio Supreme Court unanimously upheld maximum consecutive sentences totaling 134 years for a Columbus man convicted in three armed home invasions.