Youngstown Daily Legal News

Appeal denied for man who raped toddler

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: March 21, 2016

A Cincinnati man had his convictions for rape and gross sexual imposition affirmed recently by a panel of judges in the 1st District Court of Appeals.

Presiding Judge Patrick Fischer authored the opinion on behalf of the reviewing court and held that Adam Bowers was properly convicted by a jury for his abuse of a kindergarten-age girl, identified as L.D. in court documents.

The decision affirmed the judgment of the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas, but remanded the case for a resentencing hearing after the appellate panel determined that Bowers was sentenced under an incorrect subsection of the Ohio Revised Code.

A background of the case states that, during the late summer of 2013, Bowers was married to a woman identified only as Amber in court documents. The couple was living with another, older couple identified as Debbie and Mike.

Bowers was Mike’s son and L.D. was Debbie’s granddaughter. As she had done for years prior, L.D. spent every other weekend at Debbie’s home in Newtown.

That summer, L.D. reported to Amber that Bowers had tried to initiate a sexual encounter with her at a grocery store.

The allegation led to an investigation by the Newtown Police Department which referred L.D. to the Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Cincinnati Children’s hospital.

During a recorded interview with a social worker, L.D. disclosed the scale of the abuse that she suffered at the hands of Bower.

Her telling recounted sexual molestation that began when she was five or six years old and included being forced to watch pornography, touching Bowers and oral and vaginal rape.

During a recorded interview with investigating detectives, Bowers initially denied having any sexual contact with L.D. but, as he learned what L.D. told the social worker, Bowers began to relent and eventually gave a full confession.

At the trial that followed, L.D. testified via a video connection.

Amber also took the stand in order to introduce letters that Bowers had written to her from jail, confessing the crime and debating his possible punishment.

In one letter, Bowers wrote, “I’m not necessarily blaming my dad for my actions ‘cuz I could have NOT done it, could have got away from temptation, but I let it get the best of me. Because of what I have seen, it was placed into my brain and did a dumb move. Ever since I have been with you, nothing has happened.”

In the letters, Bowers denied raping L.D. but admitted to watching pornography and masturbating with her.

He wrote that he liked “coming clean” to Amber and that he trusted her not to show the letters to anyone else.

Bowers also discussed his possible sentence in his correspondence: “There’s a guy in here, he had the same charge but more charges and a record. Anyways he got sentenced for 37 years. He had 8 charges, dropped all but 3. Charged him for two F1s and an F2. He got accused for raping his own 4 year old daughter. Now he had a minor record for the same thing ... rape. That’s why I wanted to trust you first. Cuz I don’t want that to happen to me.”

The state also presented the testimony of the social worker who interviewed L.D., the video recording of the interview and the testimony of the detective who interviewed Bowers along with the video recording of his confession.

In his own defense, Bowers took the stand and claimed that L.D. had touched his genitals, but only once. When asked for more details as to how this happened, Bowers could not give any specifics, stating, “She just came in contact with it and that was it.”

“You don’t remember the details of how a little girl touched your penis?” the prosecutor asked.

Bowers answered that he did not.

With regard to the letters that he sent to Amber, Bowers testified that he was trying to win her back because she cut off contact with him after his arrest and filed for divorce.

And, regarding his taped confession, Bowers stated simply that he made up “a simple lie.”

After hearing the evidence and testimony, the jury convicted Bowers of rape and gross sexual imposition and the trial court imposed a prison term of 25 years to life.

On direct appeal to the 1st District court, Bowers argued that the letters to Amber should not have been admitted into evidence because they were privileged spousal communications. The court of appeals disagreed.

“The letters from Bowers to Amber were sent after Bowers had gone to prison and some were sent even after Bowers and Amber had divorced — although the record is not clear which letters were sent when,” Fischer wrote. “The record is clear, however, that Amber sought to cut Bowers out of her life after the allegations against L.D. surfaced.”

According to the evidence, Amber refused to speak to Bowers and he used the letters in order to try and “win her back.”

Because Amber had ceased all communication and filed for divorce in an effort to permanently distance herself from Bowers, the appellate panel held that coverture had been relinquished.

“As a result, the jailhouse letters from Bowers to Amber were not privileged communications and we overrule Bowers’ first assignment of error,” Fischer wrote.

The court of appeals proceeded to overrule Bowers’ remaining assignments of error, including allegations of prosecutorial misconduct during closing remarks, ineffective assistance of counsel and challenges to the sufficiency and manifest weight of the evidence.

However, the panel of judges upheld Bowers’ final claim that the trial court erred in imposing an indefinite sentence of 25 years to life in prison.

At the sentencing hearing, the trial court stated that it would be sentencing Bowers under R.C. 2971.03(A)(c)(i), which requires a sentencing court to impose 25 years to life in prison for sexually violent predators.

When Bowers questioned the court’s sentence, the trial court responded that it “has no discretion” and was bound by the sentence required by statute.

“The state did not include a sexually violent predator specification on Bowers’ indictment, thus, the trial court erred in applying R.C. 2971.03(A) to Bowers,” Fischer wrote.

Instead, the appellate panel held that Bowers should have been sentenced under R.C. 2907.02(B), which governs the sentencing of an offender who rapes a child under 10 years of age.

Under that statute, the trial court could impose a definite term of imprisonment, life imprisonment or life without parole.

“In sum, the trial court was under the mistaken impression that it had no discretion in sentencing Bowers, and the trial court erred in applying R.C. 2971.03(A),” Fischer wrote. “As a result, we sustain Bowers’ sixth assignment of error.

“On remand, the trial court must resentence Bowers in accordance with R.C. 2907.02(B).”

The trial court’s judgment was affirmed in all other respects with Judges Sylvia Hendon and Penelope Cunningham concurring.

The case is cited State v. Bowers, 2016-Ohio-904.

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