YOUNGSTOWN — A domestic violence victim refused to come to court Monday to testify against her attacker, setting up the possibility that the defendant could walk free.

It is the second case this month in which a defendant had called his victim from the Mahoning County jail hundreds of times while awaiting trial and involved the prosecutor’s office asking the judge to approve a material-witness warrant, which requires law enforcement to arrest the witness and hold her in the county jail until her testimony is complete.

In this case, defendant Ronald S. Rollins, 56, of Norman Avenue, Smith Township, near Alliance, considered the possibility that the woman would be arrested and agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

During a hearing Monday at about the time his jury trial was scheduled to start, Rollins pleaded guilty to a fourth-degree felony domestic violence charge and was sentenced to one year in prison. It was a reduction from the third-degree domestic violence charge in his indictment.

Rollins gets 126 days of jail credit, having been booked into the county jail on Christmas Day last year, the day he smacked his live-in girlfriend on the head several times and “slammed her to the ground,” according to a Smith Township police report.

Police were sent to the home when the woman could be heard on a 911 call saying Rollins had “been beating on me all night,” the report states.

The felony domestic violence charge Rollins faced was elevated because of Rollins having been convicted three previous times of domestic violence, according to the Smith Township police report — 2003 and 2013 in Portage County and 2021 in Mahoning County.

SAME VICTIM

The filing by Assistant Prosecutor Daniel Yozwiak states that Rollins was convicted twice in February 2021 for assaults against the same woman as in the present case.

“However, as is common in cases of domestic violence, (the woman) has been more than reluctant to pursue criminal charges against the defendant on this occasion,” Yozwiak stated.

“Although (the woman) has never once recanted the physical abuse that she initially reported to law enforcement, she has repeatedly asked that the State of Ohio dismiss this case,” the filing states. “Nonetheless, the State of Ohio has a duty to administer justice and protect all members of our community, even when those duties do not align with the wishes of the victim.”

A subpoena was issued for the woman to testify at the trial set for Monday, but she claimed she had moved and did not receive the subpoena. When the prosecutor’s office called her, the calls were disconnected, and prosecutors were unable to reach her after that either.

The prosecutor’s office tried to locate the woman by listening to the jail calls Rollins made to her. They learned that Rollins called the woman 867 times since the Christmas Day assaults, with 313 of those calls being answered and completed, the filing states. Judge Anthony D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court ordered Rollins to have no contact with the victim at his arraignment in January.

Yozwiak asked the judge to approve the material witness warrant, saying “dismissal of the pending charge of domestic violence against the defendant would not be justice.”

At the hearing, Yozwiak said Rollins’ two 2021 domestic violence convictions were against the same victim as in this case, but the woman did not want Rollins to go to prison and instead wanted the charge to be dismissed. Rollins has one other earlier domestic violence conviction, he said.

Rollins’ attorney, Walter Ritchie, said Rollins and the victim “apparently still continue to have a relationship,” and “each have their own issues.”

In sentencing Rollins, D’Apolito told Rolllins that even though the woman did not want to testify, a police officer who observed the woman’s injuries was prepared to testify at the Rollins trial, so the trial would have gone forward.

The judge said it “would have been easy to dismiss the case, but I don’t think that would have been the right thing. I’ve seen victims in other situations — out of love, out of fear or a combination — not moving forward (with prosecution) because they believed this was the last time.” He said in his experience, that proves not to be true.

“I was not willing to wait until you really, really hurt her or kill her before you were sent to prison,” the judge said. “My only hope is that with the amount of time left on your sentence, she decides to get away from you for her own safety.”

ANOTHER CASE

Following a trial earlier this month in the courtroom of Judge Anthony Donofrio of Mahoning County, Sammy F. Anderson J., 28, was sentenced to 15.5 years to 19.5 years in prison after being found guilty at trial of two counts of felonious assault for severely beating his girlfriend on two occasions last year.

His victim also did not appear to testify in that trial, but she was arrested and held in the county jail to make sure she appeared for trial. Anderson had called his victim over 1,417 times from the Mahoning County jail.

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