Court upholds 84-year term

March 11, 2008 at 1:17a.m.

Keep a brutal home invader locked up for life, the appeals court says.

YOUNGSTOWN — An appellate court has upheld an 84-year prison term, citing the viciousness of a young home invader’s attack on an 83-year-old man who was beaten, robbed and left to die in a locked fruit cellar; and of a separate beating and robbery of an elderly South Side couple.

In a decision released Monday, a three-judge panel of the 7th District Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed the sentence Judge R. Scott Krichbaum imposed in August 2006 upon James Goins Jr. of the Mansfield Correctional Institution.

“Given Goins’ juvenile record and the depraved state of mind required for the commission of these offenses, it cannot be said that the public, and primarily its safety, would not benefit from having Goins incarcerated for 84 years,” the appellate judges ruled.

The appellate judges rejected Goins’ claim that the lengthy prison term would unnecessarily burden the state’s finances and that “the public will benefit little’’ from locking him up in middle and old age for crimes Goins’ lawyer said were “largely a product of his youth and immaturity.”

In the appeal filed on Goins’ behalf, Atty. Jennifer McLaughlin also argued unsuccessfully that the lengthy prison term for the Jan. 29, 2001, crimes is an unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment.

Goins’ argument is misguided because “it belies the serious nature of his offenses. Goins ignores the sheer number of violent felony offenses for which he was convicted,” and ignored “the brutal nature” of the offenses, the appellate judges ruled.

In 2002, Judge Krichbaum, of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, sentenced Goins and his accomplice in the crimes, Chad Barnette, to maximum consecutive sentences totaling 851‚Ñ2 years in prison.

Both defendants were 17 at the time they committed attempted aggravated murder, aggravated robbery, felonious assault, kidnapping and receiving stolen property. Both were tried by a jury and convicted as adults.

Judge Krichbaum shaved 18 months off the sentences for both young men in the summer of 2006 after the Ohio Supreme Court ordered both defendants resentenced under new U.S. and Ohio Supreme Court guidelines.

Barnette, of Trumbull Correctional Institution, and Goins broke into the Miller Street home of William Sovak, 83, beat and robbed him and left him in his fruit cellar. The prosecution said the attack hastened the death of Sovak, who lived the rest of his life in a nursing home and died after the trial.

On the same day, Goins and Barnette broke into the Marmion Avenue home of Louis Luchisan, who used a wheelchair, and his wife, Elizabeth, and beat and robbed them.

The appellate court decision was rendered by Judges Gene Donofrio, Joseph J. Vukovich and Cheryl L. Waite.

Paul Gains, county prosecutor, and Jennifer Paris, assistant prosecutor, represented the prosecutor’s office during the appeal.