Staff photo / Ed Runyan Rean Easterling, left, looks at facts his attorney, Lou DeFabio, cited in his brief regarding the amount of speedy trial time that has expired in Easterling’s criminal case during a hearing Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

At the end of a hearing Wednesday, Judge Anthony D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court denied a motion by Rean Easterling to dismiss his drug charges. Later, Easterling pleaded guilty to reduced charges and was sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Easterling, 31, and his attorney, Lou DeFabio, asked for dismissal on the grounds that Easterling was not brought to trial within the 270-day requirement under Ohio law.

Easterling was arrested April 30, 2022, but the law describes various events that stop the speedy-trial clock.

A filing by DeFabio provided what he called a “prima facie case for dismissal,” meaning a “first impression” conclusion. Once there is a “prima facie case for dismissal,” the burden falls to the state to “demonstrate that sufficient time” did not count toward a speedy trial so that a speedy-trial violation did not occur, DeFabio stated, quoting from case law.

“If the state has violated a defendant’s right to speedy trial, then the court must dismiss the charges against the defendant,” DeFabio stated.

During the hearing, DeFabio said he saw one instance where Easterling should get credit for three days of jail credit for every one day he was in jail — the first day after he was arrested in 2022. In all other instances, he gets one day of jail credit for each day he was in jail, DeFabio said, adding “Mr. Easterling feels differently.”

DeFabio said Easterling does not get three days credit for every day in jail while awaiting trial because Eastering had two criminal cases in Mahoning County and one in Trumbull County at the same time.

D’Apolito asked Easterling why he felt differently than his attorney. Easterling gave a reason, but DeFabio explained another issue, and Easterling said he understood.

The judge said he is “always willing to listen, (to a defendant) and I go over it and over it again because it is confusing, especially when you have multiple cases.”

Then the judge told Easterling, “From what I can tell, when you were arrested” in February 2023, “from that moment on,” Easterling did not qualify for any “three-for-one credit. Everything is 1-for-1.” The judge said the Trumbull County case doesn’t change that because Easterling was also being held on a second Mahoning County case at the same time.

Easterling said he has read the case law on speedy-trial time. Then he read from a case in which a defendant was charged with multiple crimes in a single indictment, meaning the defendant should have been given “triple-count credit.” But the judge pointed out Easterling’s indictments were in separate cases.

DeFabio said the question he raised in his motion was whether there were events that stopped the speedy-trial clock from running.

D’Apolito said there were. The defense asked for the testing of evidence in October, which stopped the speedy-trial clock. When the judge approved the motion for testing, he said he was clear in saying the testing required a new trial date of Feb. 20, 2024, and the speedy-trial clock stopped until the new trial date, “per the agreement of the parties.”

D’Apolito estimated that fewer than 100 days of the speedy-trial clock have elapsed.

Late in the day, DeFabio and Easterling returned to D’Apolito’s court, this time to accept a plea agreement that amended Easterling’s four drug charges in two cases to four third-degree felonies with a joint recommendation that Easterling get 18 months in prison.

Easterling pleaded guilty to two counts of aggravated drug possession and single counts of fentanyl-related compound possession, cocaine possession. D’Apolito gave him the 18-month sentence and credit for 406 days in the Mahoning County jail awaiting trial.

It leaves Easterling with five months left to serve in prison.

Have an interesting story? Email Ed Runyan at erunyan@vindy.com.