YOUNGSTOWN — The 7th District Court of Appeals has upheld the most recent prison sentence for Chaz Bunch, 36, for the brutal 2001 rape of a female Youngstown State University student.

He can ask for freedom when he is 60 years old.

Judge Maureen Sweeney of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court had sentenced Bunch in 2019, after the Ohio and U.S. Supreme courts found that Bunch’s earlier 89-year sentence was unconstitutional.

The courts had objected to Bunch’s original sentence, finding that offenders who commit nonhomicide crimes as a juvenile should not have to serve a lifelong prison sentence.

Bunch’s co-defendant, Brandon Moore, 35, also was resentenced, in his case to 50 years in prison.

But Bunch then appealed the 49-year re-sentence and other issues. The Youngstown-based appeals court, however, found that the most recent sentencing is not contrary to law.

A jury found Bunch guilty in 2002 of three counts of rape, three counts of complicity to rape, one count of aggravated robbery, one count of kidnapping and eight gun specifications.

The convictions were based on the rape of a woman Aug. 21, 2001. She was getting items out of the trunk of her car in preparation for going to her job at a Detroit Avenue group home when Moore approached her with a gun and ordered her into her car, then drove away with her.

At the dead end of Peyatt Street in the city, the woman was ordered out of the car, and Bunch and Moore raped her repeatedly at gunpoint. The woman eventually was allowed to leave in her car.

The result of Bunch’s current sentence is that he will be eligible to ask Sweeney or her successor for release from prison in 26 years, when he is 60. He must be released by the time he is 65 unless he commits other offenses, Mahoning County prosecutors said in 2019.

The Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction web site states Bunch, who is incarcerated at the Mansfield Correctional Institution, will be eligible for parole in 2050.