Sunday, November 21, 2010
WASHINGTON, D.C.
The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the appeal of former chiropractor Gregory Dew, convicted of rape and gross sexual imposition, but Dew’s lawyer said he’ll pursue another legal avenue.
“We’re deeply disappointed, but we’re going to fight on, and we anticipate that we may be filing a writ of habeus corpus in U.S. District Court,” said Atty. Richard G. Lillie of Cleveland, who represents the former Boardman chiropractor.
Lillie said he’ll argue that there were constitutional violations in Dew’s jury trial that justify his being released from the Trumbull Correctional Institution.
One of those violations was introduction into evidence of a telephone conversation between Dew and one of his former gymnastics students, which police recorded secretly and without a warrant, Lillie said.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s Nov. 15 refusal to review the case followed the refusal by the Ohio Supreme Court to review the case.
Those refusals let stand last December’s unanimous decision by the 7th District Court of Appeals, which upheld Dew’s con-victions for sex crimes long ago against two of his former gymnastics students but vacated his convictions for more-recent alleged sex offenses against two of his adult female chiropractic patients.
In making that decision, the appeals court shaved 111/2 years off the maximum consecutive 43-year prison term imposed by Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, reducing the total prison time to 311/2 years.
The appellate judges found insufficient evidence to support Dew’s conviction for the rape of one chiropractic patient and for gross sexual imposition against another patient between 2005 and 2007.
In the gymnasts’ case, the appeals court ruled the evidence was sufficient to support Dew’s convictions on three rape counts and one GSI count, pertaining to offenses between 1990 and 1992 against girls who were between age 15 and 17.
The offenses against the young gymnasts occurred before Dew, 49, of Kelly Park Road, Columbiana, became a chiropractor.