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Officer fights ‘excessive jail sentence’

Gets 10 days for not wearing a mask while in courtroom

YOUNGSTOWN — The attorney for Thomas Wisener, the Youngstown police officer found in contempt of court for refusing to wear a face covering in Youngstown Municipal Court Feb. 23, says 10 days in jail is excessive for the type of incident involved.

Judge Carla Baldwin sentenced Wisener to 10 days in jail, but an appeal the day he was taken to jail secured his release pending final outcome of Wisener’s appeal.

Attorney Daniel Leffler of the Ohio Patrolman’s Benevolent Association, the union representing Wisener, stated in a filing with the Ohio 7th District Court of Appeals that the court’s punishment “must be reasonable.”

The Leffler filing is in response to the prosecution filing from attorney John Juhasz, who was pressed into service in the appeals court matter after the Youngstown Law Department recused itself from the case because of its close working relationship with the court and the Youngstown Police Department.

Juhasz’s filing said Wisener “chose on his own to wear the uniform of a law enforcement officer while flaunting the law himself” by refusing to wear a facial covering while in the court building. Wisener was there for a case for which he was involved in his role as a police officer.

Leffler said Wisener’s circumstances are comparable to a Cuyahoga County case in which an attorney was found in contempt of court for “pulling down his mask during a court proceeding” and a judge found the lawyer in contempt for violating mask mandates and policies of the common pleas court.

“However, the court held that the (attorney) ‘could purge the finding of contempt by paying a $1,000 fine or providing proof of the COVID-19 vaccination within 45 days of the order.'”

Leffler’s filing added that in Wisener’s case, Baldwin “did not make a finding of how (Wisener’s) actions, simply being present (in court), actually interfered with or disrupted a court proceeding or matter.”

It added that Wisener’s case is “not a circumstance compared to the types of matters that typically result in criminal contempt for which jail time is imposed.”

Leffler gave examples of more serious contempt cases in which the defendant received jail time: a defendant “intruding into defense counsel’s conference with his witness; accusing the defense counsel of having the witness arrested; interfering with the defendant’s right to subpoena witnesses; and intimidating defense counsel so as to interfere with the defendant’s right to effective assistance of counsel.”

Leffler’s filing also delves into the religious freedom issues he raised in his initial appeal filing, namely that Wisener refused to wear a facial covering because it violated his deeply held religious beliefs.

Leffler earlier argued that Wisener quoted the Gospel of Matthew in telling Baldwin the gospel tells him to “love the Lord God with all my heart, with all my soul and all of my mind” and that wearing a facial covering would have caused him to communicate what he believed was a lie, that wearing a mask will protect other people or that it will save their lives.

Juhasz argued in his filing that when Wisener’s pastor testified at Wisener’s contempt hearing, he “did not testify that the wearing of masks violates a central tenet of the religion, or that wearing masks violated the Ninth Commandment, Matthew Chapter 22, or indeed anything else in the Bible.”

Leffler’s filing states that “Ohio has adopted a constitutional standard (that) prohibits state action that interferes with one’s own conscience. The religious belief or tenet need not be a central tenet of a bona fide religion or widely published as a religious doctrine.

“The Ohio Constitution suggests that the religious belief is personal and individual. Here, Wisener testified as to his own personal religious belief. A witness testified that he believed Wisener’s belief was sincere and deeply held,” the filing states.

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