Man gets 30 years in case insiders say shouldn’t have gone to trial

TRENTON >> John Ward was sent to prison for 30 years on Thursday for putting his former wife in a chokehold, pointing a gun to her head and threatening to kill her and a friend in 2013 at the home they once shared in the capital city.

It was triple the time he would have served in prison had he accepted prosecutors’ last-minute plea offer prior to trial. And it virtually guaranteed the 56-year-old convicted felon will spend most of his remaining life in state prison, drawing solace from the victim, the promise of an appeal from the defense and praise from prosecutors.

Ward must serve 15 years under the state’s No Early Release Act before he could be paroled, meaning he’ll be 71 when he could be released.

Judge Pedro Jimenez’s sentence was stiff, but it could have been worse if he wasn’t legally required to merge most of the eight counts, ranging from second-degree to fourth-degree crimes, that Ward was found guilty of during a jury trial in January.

The sentence put Ward’s former wife at ease. She had told the judge that while she had forgiven her former husband of seven years, she was still deathly afraid of him.

“I wake up and going to sleep thinking about this,” she said. “The day you release John Ward is the day he comes after me. I bet my life on it.”

In some sense, Ward also bet his life on a jury trial.

It backfired. And it brought up a question people in the Mercer County public defender’s office have privately kicked around.

This was not The Trial of the Century, where a famous football star was accused of butchering his wife and a friend in an upscale California neighborhood. O.J. Simpson faced life if he was convicted.

So why did Ward’s case go to trial? Insiders said if people were convinced of Simpson’s guilt, the proofs were as strong in Ward’s case. That’s a lot coming from defense attorneys whose hands are usually tied by their client’s wishes.

Still, Ward could have been out in about eight and a half years if he had accepted the 10-year plea offer.

Anthony Cowell, Ward’s attorney, said he could not discuss whether his client refused to accept the offer and he disputed that it was that low. He said the best deal prosecutors presented was 12 years.

“I think you can draw your own conclusions,” Cowell said. He said he had “no control over” the judge’s “unusually high” sentence and slammed prosecutors for getting around the jury’s verdict.

Ward was acquitted of attempted murder but convicted of counts of aggravated assault, terroristic threats and weapons offenses. He was sentenced to a maximum of 10 years on each of three guns charges, imposed consecutively for 30 years.

“The state back-doored the jury’s verdict,” Cowell said. “They got what they wanted not on their skill at trial but on the desire to lock up my client for the rest of his life.”

Assistant Prosecutor Laura Kotarba disagreed with Cowe ll’ s assessment one very front. She said that, in fact, the best offer was 10 years and Ward’s sentence fell in line with the law.

“There’ s not a lot of movement on sentencing ,” she said. “He got what is allowed under law. There was no back-dooring. It’s not a back door. It’s a fair and just punishment and very much a front door.”

The entire crime hinged on what happened May 17, 2013, inside the home Ward once shared with his wife on the 1000 block of Lyndale Avenue. The couple had separated for three months but the victim occasionally watched TV with her husband at their home.

On the day in question, prosecutors said Ward texted his wife that their house had been broken into. He did this to lure her.

She arrived with a friend who told jurors she witnessed the frightening ordeal.

Ward, known by the nickname “Butter,” put a gun to his wife’s head and attempted to pull the trigger. He was also convicted of pointing the gun at his wife’s friend and threateningto kill her to keep her at bay.

A police officer testified he saw Ward holding the gun to his wife’s head when he arrive at the home.

Kotarba said Ward’s wife was spared only because the gun jammed, leaving a chambered round. Cowell’s defense was that his client was not guilty of attempted murder because he wanted to reconcile. He pointed the gun at his wife to “scare her back into his arms.” The defense raised eyebrows and was based on expert testimony about whether the gun was operable when Ward brandished it.

Cowell contended his client knew the gun did not work. Prosecutors disagreed, but it was good enough to convince the jury to acquit Ward of attempted murder.

Cowell’s defense implicitly conceded his client was of other charges, though the defense attorney swept aside that suggestion.

At sentencing, the defense attorney called Ward a “decent guy who made a terrible, terrible mistake,” not someone who was “on a rampage heading toward the point of no return.”

Cowell said that although Ward had four past convictions, and was sent to prison

each time, he did not have a history of violence.

“[Ward] was a guy who was broken,” Cowell

said. “His marriage was falling apart. He crossed the line of socially acceptable notions of grief.”

Ward spoke briefly but did not directly apologize for his actions.

“I didn’t want to hurt her,” he said. “I just lost it at that time.”

Ward’s former wife said she was a religious woman and forgave her former husband as well as herself.

Jimenez said sending the convicted fe lon to prison had not stopped him from reoffending in the past. He said Ward’s recent crime was the result of an “obsession” with his former wife, a fixation that could dog the woman the rest of her life.

“Is this put on hold until the defendant is paroled?” Jimenez wondered. “That is the day she will be on high alert, constantly looking over her shoulder for Mr. Ward.”