Perry County jury finds defendant guilty of assault, not racism
NEW LEXINGTON – Sometimes justice rings hollow.
Other times it feels like a polarizing witch hunt.
For some it’s simply the best you could hope for, given the circumstances.
After a two-day trial, a jury in Perry County found Joseph Mccabe, a white man accused of fighting his Black neighbor, Leon Davis, guilty of assault.
Davis, who testified that the attack was racist, was furious that the jury disputed the additional misdemeanor charges leveled against Mccabe: one count each of aggravated menacing and ethnic intimidation, Ohio’s sole hate crime statute.
A 65-year-old who has lived in New Lexington for the past 13 years, Davis shared his recollections with The Dispatch this year of the attack he suffered at the hands of Mccabe and two other neighbors, Carl Finck and Charles Williams.
Outside the Perry County Municipal Courthouse on Tuesday afternoon, Davis spat out his anger in between drags of a cigarette while tears slipped through the corners of his wife Ronda’s eyes.
“It wasn’t worth it to bring it to this point,” he said, shaking his head.
Inside, Mccabe ripped off his mask in disgust after walking out of the courtroom.
“I felt it was unjust for the village of New Lexington to play a racist game when it was a neighborhood dispute,” the 55-year-old said.
Adam Barclay, the assistant village solicitor tasked with proving Mccabe’s guilt was pleased with the verdict, though he wished the jury would have found Mccabe guilty on all three charges.
“As a white male prosecutor, it’s impossible to put myself in Mr. Davis’ shoes,” he acknowledged. “Ethnic intimidation is a difficult charge to prove — assault was the most clear-cut charge with the most evidence.”
Throughout the trial, witnesses for the defense testified that while Mccabe repeatedly swung at Davis on the morning on July 5, 2020, he was too drunk to land a punch and the other accused assailants, Finck and Williams (whose separate cases are pending) had nothing to do with the fight.
Mccabe’s attorney, Benjamin E. Fickel, made the case that Davis and his wife beat up Mccabe with a brick and an ice scraper, respectively, until Williams came down to break them up. The Davises disagreed.
Each of them choked up on the stand while recalling the fear they experienced
after Mccabe started a series of racial slurs and charged toward the couple, who were returning from a late morning breakfast and Kroger run.
While Davis admitted to grabbing a brick from his flower garden to defend himself, he said he never struck Mccabe with it, nor did his wife attack Mccabe with an ice scraper.
New Lexington Police Department Officer David Crate testified that there was no blood, dirt, dent or visible use found on the brick and ice scraper when he responded to the scene last year.
But when Brenda Gay Johnson, mother-in-law to Finck and Williams, took the stand she told the jury this was not a case of racism, but rather, a neighborhood scuffle gone wrong.
“Joe was pretty well-sauced,” she said, “but I watched [Leon Davis] beat him in the head with a brick and I told my son-in-law, Charlie Williams, that Davis was going to kill Joey.”
Johnson said she implored Williams to intervene, and he testified that he broke up the fight by applying a pressure point on Davis.
During the closing arguments, Barclay appealed to the jury, acknowledging that many in New Lexington are weary from talk of racism.
“It’s hard to recognize that racism may exist in Perry County,” he said. “As much as we love our small town, [the ethnic intimidation] charge is uncomfortable because it forces to consider we’re not immune to the ugliness found in other places.”
But ultimately, after a 45-minute deliberation, the jury did not find Barclay’s reasoning compelling enough to convict Mccabe on charges of ethnic intimidation or aggravated menacing.
Mccabe is facing up to six months in jail in addition to a potential fine up to $1,000 as result of the assault charges.
The other two men pleaded guilty to assault in an agreement where the village dropped charges of aggravated menacing and ethnic intimidation in the spring.
But Davis was not present in the courtroom for those hearings.
And the miscommunication between the Perry County Village Solicitor’s Office and the Ohio Crime Victim Justice Center (OCVJC), the nonprofit agency representing Davis, led the justice center to file an appeal to re-open Finck and Williams’ guilty pleas on the basis that Davis’ constitutional right to be present for both men’s hearings under Marsy’s Law.
Those legal protections, which were approved by Ohio voters in November 2017, gives victims the right to not only be present during court, but “provide input to a prosecutor before a deal is struck,” The Dispatch has reported.
The visiting judge who presided over Mccabe’s trial, visiting Judge Jerry Catanzaro, is expected to rule on the OCVJC’S motion to re-open Finck and Williams cases.
Meanwhile, Mccabe’s sentencing will take place at 11 a.m. on Monday at the Perry County Municipal Courthouse.
Céilí Doyle is a Report for America corps member and covers rural issues in Ohio for The Dispatch. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation at https://bit.ly/3fnsgaz. cdoyle@dispatch.com @cadoyle_18