YOUNGSTOWN — The Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which prosecuted former Poland Township police officer and former Austintown Township Trustee Steve Kent, has filed its response to Kent’s appeal of his tampering-with-evidence conviction.

The April 17 filing in the 7th District Court of Appeals denies that any errors were committed in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court when Judge John Durkin sentenced Kent, 54, to one year in prison last September after a jury found Kent guilty of the tampering charge.

The prison sentence was stayed pending the outcome of the appeal.

The tampering was filed against Kent at the same time as three counts of sexual battery, which accused Kent of engaging in sexual battery of a student at Poland Seminary High School by forcing or coercing a then 16- to 17-year-old student to perform oral sex on three occasions in 2021 while Kent was school resource officer.

A jury in Mahoning County found Kent guilty of the tampering but not guilty of sexual battery. The tampering conviction was based on Kent performing a factory reset on his cellphone June 6, 2021, after Poland parent Carla Bobbey confronted Kent about the girl telling Bobbey of the girl’s allegations against him. A factory reset wipes out the photos, text messages and other data on a cellphone.

Attorney John Juhasz filed a brief on behalf of Kent in February saying the evidence in the trial did not prove that Kent wiped out evidence “when an official investigation was underway or when Kent should have known that one was likely to be initiated.”

AG’s OFFICE

The A.G. response, written by Andrea Boyd, special prosecuting attorney in Kent’s case and assistant Ohio attorney general, states that Kent’s argument that the factory reset of his phone did not constitute tampering because no official investigation was underway “defies logic.”

She quoted from the February filing by Juhasz, which states “But in a day where it seems that illicit sexual contact between high school students and those who have authority over them becomes more frequent, many of these cases do not result in criminal prosecutions, with the parties choosing not to expose themselves to public ridicule.”

Boyd replied, “This (inappropriate) attempt at claiming that Kent, a police officer, did not think that there would be an investigation when it was reported to the school where he was a school resource officer that he was engaging in sexual conduct with a student defies logic.”

Even if the alleged victim “were reluctant to cooperate with a prosecution, it strains credulity to believe that a school resource official would disregard their statutory obligation to report the sexual conduct once informed of it and that an investigation would not ensue.”

Kent “was explicitly told by Bobbey that she “was going to tell the school, and (she) was going to tell (the alleged victim’s) father.” To this, Kent responded that he would ‘just quit,’ he would ‘go away’ and never be seen again,” Boyd’s filling states. “Bobbey replied that that was ‘not how this (was) gonna go, because (her) fear was this would happen somewhere else. Bobbey told Kent she wanted to see him turn his badge in.”

Boyd’s filing states that Kent’s filing “completely ignores this second conversation as if it never happened.” Boyd added that “Bobbey told Kent in no uncertain terms that she was going to report Kent’s sexual conduct with (the alleged victim) to the school where he was a school resource officer.” Kent “offered to ‘go away,'” Boyd added. “He made these offers because he was worried about the school finding out about the sexual conduct and reporting it to police, as they are statutorily mandated to do.”

Boyd’s filing says “Kent knew that his phone would be seized if an investigation into his relationship with (the alleged victim) were to occur,” adding that “Bobbey’s testimony alone — when construed in a light most favorable to the (prosecution) — was sufficient to show that Kent knew that an official proceeding or investigation was likely to be instituted at the time that he conducted the factory reset on his cell phone.”

She pointed out that “While Kent maintains that he conducted the factory reset on his phone so that his wife would not find any more information about his affair with Bobbey, there are several problems with this argument.

“First, and most importantly, Kent challenges only the sufficiency of the evidence. This court, therefore, is to only look at the State’s evidence and whether that was sufficient to support a conviction.”

Boyd said Kent’s theory of the case “was simply not reasonable. Kent’s wife already knew about the picture and the affair with Bobbey; Kent’s wife and daughter knew about the affair (earlier), and things were ‘really bad’ at their house during that time,” Boyd’s filing states.

Boyd stated that it was “reasonable for the jury to infer that Kent’s decision to obliterate all of the contents on his cell phone one day after Carla Bobbey told him that she was going to tell the school and (the alleged victim’s) father about his sexual relationship with (the alleged victim) was so that the contents of the phone could not be used in an investigation against him that was likely to ensue.”

SENTENCE LENGTH

As for the second error Kent alleges took place in his case — that Kent’s one-year prison sentence was disproportionate — Boyd stated that the sentencing range for the conviction was between nine months and three years.

“In imposing Kent’s twelve-month prison sentence, the trial court complied with the relevant statutes by referencing” those statutes, and Kent “has failed to affirmatively demonstrate that the trial court failed to consider” the relevant statutes.

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