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Fugitive home invader, 35, gets 53 years
YOUNGSTOWN
Twenty-eight-and-a-half years have been shaved off a fugitive, armed home invader’s sentence, but he still has the equivalent of a life prison term.
For the second time, Judge Maureen A. Sweeney has re-sentenced Lexter Williams as ordered by the 7th District Court of Appeals, which found inconsistencies, omissions or errors in the previous sentencings.
The Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge Tuesday sentenced Williams, 35, an inmate at the Richland Correctional Institution, to 53 years in prison.
The reduction from the earlier-imposed 811/2-year prison term was achieved largely through merger of aggravated robbery and kidnapping counts.
Willliams had pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated robbery, four counts of kidnapping, two counts of aggravated burglary and one count of gross sexual imposition, with firearm specifications, and to being a felon with a gun in the Jan. 22, 2009, invasion in the 100 block of Livingston Street on the city’s East Side.
The prosecution agreed to recommend a 13-year prison term for him if he showed up for his Nov. 22, 2010, sentencing, but the judge warned him failure to appear could bring a 95-year prison term.
Williams, who had been freed from jail on his own recognizance under electronically monitored house arrest pending sentencing, fled to Philadelphia, where he was captured.
The appeals court ordered the first re-sentencing because of the inconsistency between the 891/2 years in prison imposed orally in the sentencing hearing and the 831/2 years imposed in the written sentencing judgment entry.
After the 811/2-year re-sentencing, the appeals panel ordered Judge Sweeney to decide which allied offenses should merge, correct errors in the titles of the charges, and explain to Williams the possible consequences of a parole violation if he ever leaves prison.
The appeals panel, however, rejected Williams’ claim his sentence was disproportionate to his crimes.
“He had an opportunity to receive a lesser sentence, but lost that opportunity due to his own actions,” the appeals panel ruled.
On Tuesday, Dawn Cantalamessa, an assistant county prosecutor, called for a 571/2-year prison term, but Williams’ lawyer, Lou DeFabio, asked for 20 years.
“I appreciate that there has to be some punishment, some deterrent” to fleeing, but the penalty shouldn’t be life imprisonment, DeFabio said.
Williams apologized for his crimes and acknowledged he deserves prison time, but protested the length of his sentence.
“People who killed [someone] got less time than me,” Williams told the judge.
Despite the appeals court’s instruction, Judge Sweeney did not specify the possible consequences of a parole violation.
The three-judge appeals panels were unanimous in both decisions concerning Williams’ sentence.