Man found innocent on one count of rape

A hearing is set to pick a date for a new trial.

STAFF REPORT

WARREN — Jurors deliberated all day Thursday and Friday on the guilt or innocence of Martin Warren before finding him innocent of one count of rape and reaching no verdict on the second rape count.

Afterward, Warren, 60, of Champion, walked out of the Trumbull County Courthouse, still free on bond pending a determination of whether prosecutors will try him again on the one charge.

A hearing is set for Jan. 26 to pick a new trial date.

The jury was unable to render a verdict on whether Warren raped a 13-year-old female relative Jan. 28, 2006, in the basement of Warren’s Cleveland Avenue home.

In the girl’s testimony, heard in the common pleas courtroom of Judge Peter Kontos, she said she didn’t know whether Warren committed one of the rape charges — the one for which he was found innocent — but was “pretty sure” he committed the other — for which the jury was undecided.

She described a Saturday three years ago when she went to the basement to help him with a computer game, teased him in a way that was common to them, and then found him kissing her and removing part of her clothes and his clothes.

After a couple of minutes in which the girl says some sort of offense occurred, the girl was able to get away and ran to a gas station to call her grandmother for help.

The Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation said the chances that DNA found in the girl’s underwear were from anyone but Warren were 1 in 4 quintrillion.

The girl now lives in foster care.