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Prosecutor: Plea deal necessary in rape case
YOUNGSTOWN
The prosecutor handling the rape case against Carl Chaney said a plea agreement was the only way to resolve the matter after the victim expressed her unwillingness to testify in a second trial.
Natasha Frenchko, an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, said she could not have gotten Chaney convicted in a second trial without the victim’s testimony. “I was prepared to try the case” a second time, Frenchko said.
Although Chaney’s DNA was found on the victim, Chaney claimed he and the victim had consensual sex, Frenchko noted.
Frenchko spoke Thursday after she could not be reached to comment Wednesday for a story published in Thursday’s Vindicator.
On Tuesday, Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court ordered Chaney freed on his own recognizance pending his 9 a.m. April 22 sentencing, after Chaney pleaded no contest to four counts of raping his former girlfriend in June 2007, and the judge found him guilty.
Chaney, 53, of Hubbard Road, was convicted by a jury of those same counts in May 2008.
“He didn’t plead to anything lesser. He pled to the charges he was convicted of” in the trial, said Rebecca Doherty, chief of the criminal division of the county prosecutor’s office.
After the 2008 trial, Dawn Cantalamessa, an assistant county prosecutor, called for a 40-year prison term, but then-Judge Timothy E. Franken imposed a 10-year prison term and fined Chaney $5,000.
In March 2010, however, the 7th District Court of Appeals ordered a new trial for Chaney, saying the prosecution made improper references in its cross-examination of Chaney, and in its closing argument, to Chaney’s refusal to give police a statement after his arrest.
Judge D’Apolito released Chaney after he had served almost four years of combined jail and prison time and ordered him to have no contact with the victim.
The victim declined to comment on the case Thursday evening.
In this week’s plea agreement, Frenchko agreed to recommend that Chaney be sentenced to the time he already has served.
Chaney will have to register as a sex offender quarterly with the sheriff as long as he lives.