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First-ever, all-female appeals panel convenes here
YOUNGSTOWN
It was a first for Mahoning County.
The first all-female three-judge panel of the 7th District Court of Appeals heard oral arguments Wednesday morning.
Judge Carol Ann Robb, whose six-year term on the four-judge appeals court began Monday, and Judges Mary DeGenaro and Cheryl L. Waite heard the case of a man appealing his conviction for threatening domestic violence. They will rule in writing at a later date. The appellate court’s fourth judge is Gene Donofrio.
Judge Robb, of New Waterford, is a former Columbiana County Municipal Court judge.
She was elected Nov. 4 to replace Judge Joseph J. Vukovich, who did not seek re-election to the appeals court.
The appeals court was founded in the 1880s.
Gregory D. Mayes, 30, of Austintown, appealed his conviction in a January 2014 Boardman Court trial concerning an Oct. 7, 2013, encounter with his estranged wife and the man she was with at U.S. Route 224 and Tippecanoe Road.
Judge Joseph M. Houser sentenced Mayes to 30 days in jail, with 20 of the jail days suspended, fined him $250 and put him on a year’s probation, staying the jail time pending the appeal.
In the nonjury trial, Mayes’ estranged wife and the man who accompanied her testified they heard Mayes threaten to shoot them as he walked up to the vehicle they occupied while that vehicle was stopped at a red light.
In the appeal filed on his behalf by Atty. Mark A. Carfolo, Mayes argued he was denied due process of law because the evidence was insufficient to convict him.
Carfolo said Mayes never made the threat and never inflicted violence.
Carfolo argued the prosecution didn’t meet its burden of proving the alleged victims feared the imminence of the alleged threat.
“The immediate threat was not there. There is no testimony that anyone ever saw Mr. Mayes with a gun,” Carfolo told the panel.
Ralph M. Rivera, an assistant Mahoning County prosecutor, however, told the judges the “manifest weight” of the evidence supported Mayes’ conviction.
“You had two witnesses essentially testify identically to what happened,” Rivera told the panel.
Rivera argued there was “substantial evidence and a rational basis” to find Mayes knowingly caused his estranged wife “to believe that he would cause imminent physical harm to her.”
Under Ohio law, an appeals court can reverse a conviction only if there was no rational basis for it, Rivera argued.
“You don’t necessarily have to be literally in a position to carry out that threat,” to be properly convicted of threatening domestic violence, he said.
Another case the court heard was Reginald Everson’s appeal of his aggravated murder conviction in the March 2008 drive-by shooting death of Terrell Roland on Youngstown’s South Side.
In his appeal, Everson’s lawyer, Joshua Hiznay, alleged 12 legal or procedural errors in the jury trial.
Rivera said, however, Everson got a fair trial and his conviction was supported by the manifest weight of the evidence.
Judge Lou A. D’Apolito sentenced Everson to 38 years to life in prison in this case, consecutive to a 10-year prison term for a May 2007 Auto Zone robbery on the city’s East Side that resulted in the shooting death of a store employee.
The appeals court heard six cases, consisting of four from Mahoning County and one each from Jefferson and Noble counties.
The Youngstown-based appeals court has an eight-county jurisdiction, consisting of Mahoning, Columbiana, Carroll, Harrison, Jefferson, Belmont, Monroe and Noble counties.