The prosecution alleged that our client committed rape against a child under the age of 13, among the most serious charges in the Ohio Revised Code. A conviction carried the possibility of life in prison, alongside lifetime sex offender registration and the permanent collateral consequences that follow it.
Rather than treat the State’s evidence as a given, the defense attacked what the prosecution would actually be permitted to put in front of a jury. That work was done through pretrial litigation, a series of motions challenging the admissibility of the State’s proposed evidence, filed and argued before the trial ever began.
Our client won those motions. With the evidentiary record substantially narrowed, the State dismissed every rape charge in the case.
What remained was a single misdemeanor, resolved with no additional jail time and no probation. A case that opened with life-sentence exposure closed without a felony conviction and without a prison term.