43
County opposes sentence reduction for man who paralyzed Kaluza
Photo
Taran Helms shoots a look and makes a motion before being led from the courtroom.
Photo
Joe Kaluza comes up Ivanhoe Ave to see the sight of his new home.
YOUNGSTOWN
The Mahoning County prosecutor’s office is asking the Ohio Supreme Court to block a 17-year reduction of Taran Helms’ 50-year prison term for shooting and paralyzing KFC manager Joe Kaluza.
The reduction, which would cut Helms’ sentence to 33 years, was ordered Sept. 29 by the 7th District Court of Appeals, which upheld Helms’ convictions but ordered him resentenced.
In September 2008, a jury convicted Helms, 25, of East Judson Avenue, of attempted murder, felonious assault, aggravated robbery and kidnapping with firearm specifications in the March 24, 2008, assault on Kaluza.
Judge Timothy E. Franken of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court imposed maximum consecutive sentences totaling 50 years on Helms and his accomplice, Hattie Gilbert, 22, also of East Judson Avenue.
The appeals-panel majority ruled that Judge Franken should have merged Helms’ attempted-murder and felonious-assault convictions for sentencing purposes because it said Helms committed those crimes simultaneously.
The appeals court also ruled that because Helms committed all of his crimes with the goal of robbing Kaluza, the three-year gun specifications attached to each crime should merge into a single, three-year gun specification.
In his appeal to the state’s top court, Ralph Rivera, an assistant county prosecutor, argues Helms committed attempted murder by shooting Kaluza in the neck, then separately committed felonious assault several minutes later when he threatened to shoot Kaluza in the head after pushing Kaluza’s vehicle onto a side street. Therefore, Rivera argues, those sentences should not merge.
Rivera’s appeal, however, does not argue against merger of the gun specifications, which, by itself, would cut nine years off Helms’ 50-year sentence, making it 41 years.
Helms had been scheduled for resentencing Monday by Judge Lou A. D’Apolito, successor to Judge Franken, but that has been postponed pending Ohio Supreme Court action on the appeal.
Gilbert’s appeal is still pending before the 7th District Court of Appeals.
Helms is at the Trumbull Correctional Institution in Leavittsburg, and Gilbert is at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville.