YOUNGSTOWN — Arturo Novoa, who won an appeal to be resentenced in the 2017 murder of Shannon Graves and the subsequent dismemberment and disposal of her body, received the exact same prison sentence: 43 years and one month to life.

Before Wednesday’s resentencing by Judge Anthony Donofrio of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, Novoa asked, through his attorney Ross Smith, that his May 2019 guilty plea to 43 counts be withdrawn. Smith said Novoa, who had a binder with him in the courtroom, had “newly discovered information or evidence.”

Donofrio rejected the request and resentenced Novoa.

After the sentencing, Smith said he had to talk to his client further, “but he’s going to want to pursue” withdrawing his guilty plea.

The 7th District Court of Appeals ruled Oct. 1, 2021, that Novoa could get a “limited” new sentencing hearing because of an error by Donofrio in the June 2019 sentencing, a month after the guilty plea.

The court found nothing incorrect with the guilty plea from Novoa, but determined that some of the convictions needed to be merged with others for sentencing purposes. That means Donofrio needed to combine separate convictions as they occurred from the same act.

When a judge merges two or more offenses, the judge must identify which one will receive the sentence.

The court ruled it was an error as it resulted in Novoa having more convictions on his record than authorized by law.

Donofrio merged close to 20 charges Wednesday and resentenced Novoa to the same prison time.

Attorney Stephanie Anderson of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, who prosecuted the case, had previously said the case included the “most gruesome and horrific details in Mahoning County and perhaps Ohio’s history.”

Novoa and Graves met in April 2016 and lived together on Mahoning Avenue in Youngstown. Their relationship was volatile, and Novoa killed her in the home Feb. 24, 2017, with what appeared to be a heavy, metal object.

Novoa then placed her body in the trunk of her car and took it to a home on Shields Road, where Novoa and co-defendant Andrew Hermann dismembered the body and put it in storage totes and returned it to the Mahoning Avenue home.

Novoa then had a bonfire at a home on Sherwood Avenue to destroy Graves’ clothes, papers and other items.

Novoa and Katrina Layton, another co-defendant, used sulfuric acid on parts of the body with the parts that remained moved to a freezer at the Mahoning Avenue home. They remained there until July 2017, when they were moved to a freezer at a Ravenwood Avenue apartment.

Novoa then moved the freezer to a friend’s house in Campbell. The friend discovered the remains in a backpack and called police.

Novoa has served about four-and-a-half years in prison for his crimes.