Attorneys for juvenile Larosa ask judge for separate trial and sentencing

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

When 15-year-old Jacob Larosa of Niles was charged more than two years ago in the killing of his elderly neighbor, it was the first time in decades that a Trumbull County juvenile had been charged with murder.

It was a shock to learn that a boy was accused of crimes too horrible to describe in the newspaper. He’s being tried as an adult in the March 31, 2015, killing of Marie Belcastro, 94, at her home on Cherry Street.

Now close to turning 18, Larosa and his attorneys have asked that Judge W. Wyatt McKay of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court “make new law” by letting the Larosa defense team split the trial into two phases – trial and sentencing – both handled by a jury.

The procedure is used in adult court when a defendant is facing the possibility of the death penalty in an aggravated murder case.

Larosa isn’t facing a possible death sentence, but he could get life in prison without the possibility of parole, and his lawyers believe that sentence is the same as a death sentence.

They believe that children, even those charged with murder, should not be sentenced to life in prison without parole because their youthfulness and impulsiveness make a lifelong sentence too harsh.

The filing, written by attorneys Matt Pentz and David Rouzzo of the Trumbull County office of the Ohio Public Defender, says the U.S. Supreme Court has “made it clear that juvenile life without parole cases are ‘analogous to capital punishment’ and require individualized sentencing.”

The ruling said life without parole “cannot be imposed except upon ‘the rarest of juvenile offenders, those whose crimes reflect permanent incorrigibility,’” the motion says.

To properly sentence a youthful offender convicted of murder, a judge needs sufficient information about the juvenile’s background, the filing says.

And the way to get that is to allow a defendant’s attorneys to question expert witnesses about the defendant’s “history, character and background,” the filing says.

Ordinarily, when a defendant in adult court is convicted, the county’s adult probation department investigates the defendant’s background, reports on it to the judge, and the judge decides on punishment.

But such a report would be “woefully inadequate for this court to rely upon in determining a proper sentence in this case,” the filing says.

Chris Becker and Gina Buccino Arnaut, assistant county prosecutors, meanwhile, said in a filing this week that the Larosa motion “is not based on any existing federal or state statute nor any federal or state case law.”

Prosecutors were successful in seeking to have Larosa’s murder case transferred from juvenile court to adult court, but his age at the time of the offense makes him ineligible for the death penalty, they noted.

The U.S. Supreme Court considers life in prison with no parole appropriate for children whose crimes reflect “irreparable corruption,” prosecutors said. It adds that Larosa’s crimes meet that definition.

In a death penalty case, jurors are asked to weigh the aggravating circumstances that are part of a defendant’s indictment against mitigating circumstances related to the defendant’s background.

Because Larosa was not indicted on any aggravating circumstances, “there is nothing for the jury to weigh,” prosecutors said.

“Should they weigh that the victim was 94 years old? That she was kind and caring to the defendant and provided cookies and other items to the defendant?” prosecutors said.

“That the defendant brutally beat her and assaulted her in three separate areas or crime scenes in the house including literally beating her hearing aid out of her head?”

The judge has not yet ruled on the motion.