Plea withdrawal request not granted

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

The judge who sentenced a defendant to life in prison without parole in the shooting death of a sleeping 8-year-old boy has said he has no jurisdiction to rule on the defendant’s motion to withdraw his guilty plea and go to trial.

In a judgment entry filed Thursday, Judge R. Scott Krichbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court said he lacked jurisdiction to consider Shawn Wilson’s motion because Wilson’s appeal of his conviction and sentence is pending before the 7th District Court of Appeals.

In his plea-withdrawal request, Wilson, 22, of Youngstown, said he “was not capable of knowingly and intelligently waiving his constitutional rights” to a trial when he pleaded guilty Jan. 7.

Judge Krichbaum imposed the life sentence after prosecutors took the death penalty off the table in the plea deal in the death of Bryce Linebaugh, who was fatally shot in the head with an assault rifle in his Rockford Village apartment residence at 1:15 a.m. Aug. 20, 2012.

Wilson shot the boy after announcing his intention to shoot a female neighbor of the boy’s in the face, according to the prosecution’s bill of particulars.

In an affidavit accompanying his plea-withdrawal motion, Wilson said he has been in long-term mental health counseling after witnessing the slaying of his mother at the age of 2, had been taking an anti-psychotic drug for months before the plea hearing, including the morning of that hearing, and had “experienced a breakdown in communications with his defense lawyers, who urged him to enter an agreed plea.”