Staff file photo / Ed Runyan Steve Kent testified at his trial in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. He was convicted of felony tampering with evidence and was sentenced to one year in prison. He has asked for early release.

YOUNGSTOWN — Steve Kent, the former Austintown Township trustee and former Poland Township police officer who began serving a one-year prison sentence Sept. 23 for tampering with evidence, has asked Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge John Durkin to let him out four months early.

Attorney A. Ross Douglas filed a motion with Durkin on Tuesday stating that Kent qualifies for judicial release, a type of early release from prison granted by the sentencing judge.

Judicial release can be granted as long as the defendant’s sentence is less than two years, the filing states. Durkin sentenced Kent, 55, in September 2023, but Kent appealed, and he was allowed to remain free until the appeal was over. After the 7th District Court of Appeals denied Kent’s appeal, he began serving his sentence.

He is due for release from prison Sept. 1, according to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction website.

The motion lists the factors under state law that allow a person to get out of prison early, such as the likelihood that the offender will not commit another offense and that “a sanction other than a prison term would not demean the seriousness of the offense.” The filing states that Kent “committed the offense under circumstances that are unlikely to recur.”

It states that Kent “has been imprisoned for a substantial period of time” and his “separation from his family has taken a toll since they are deprived of (Kent’s) affection, care and support.”

It states that Kent “submits that he has expressed genuine remorse for his actions and is eager to lead a law abiding life. During the perpetration of the act, (Kent) did not cause any physical harm to any person,” it states.

Kent went on trial in 2023 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court on three counts of sexual battery. A jury acquitted him on the sexual battery charges but found that Kent destroyed evidence by performing a factory reset on his phone within a day of learning that a parent was going to report him to Poland Local Schools officials and Poland Township Police, where he worked. Kent was the school resource officer at Poland Seminary High School. Kent also was fired from his job as a police officer.

Kent was convicted Aug. 14, 2023. One day later was ousted as an Austintown Township trustee. Then-Mahoning County Prosecutor Gina DeGenova notified the board that Kent’s felony conviction rendered him incompetent to serve as a township official.

Former township administrator Mike Dockry filled in until Bruce Shepas was elected to the seat in November 2023.