Five-year prison term for feces-thrower upheld

Staff report

YOUNGSTOWN

A three-judge panel of the 7th District Court of Appeals has unanimously upheld the convictions and five-year prison sentence of a man who plastered his feces throughout the back of a police cruiser and threw it at deputy sheriffs.

Ronald Chappell, 26, of West Boston Avenue, drew the five maximum, consecutive, one-year prison terms from Judge James C. Evans of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court after a jury convicted him of four counts of harassment with a bodily substance and one count of vandalism of the police cruiser in which he had been detained.

Chappell was arrested Jan. 22, 2012, in a domestic disturbance at his mother’s residence.

After his arrival at the county jail, Chappell again defecated into his hand and threw the feces at deputy sheriffs, hitting two of them.

The appeals judges Wednesday rejected Chappell’s claim that his convictions were against the “manifest weight of the evidence,” saying there was ample police officer and sheriff’s deputy testimony concerning Chappell’s actions to support the convictions.

The appeals court said Judge Evans correctly imposed consecutive sentences after finding they were necessary to protect the public and justified by Chappell’s prior criminal convictions and by the risk of his offending again.

Chappell is in the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility and will be on post-release control for three years.