YOUNGSTOWN — The attorney for Damian Cessna, 28, will have to wait until Jan. 25 to file a motion with Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Maureen Sweeney asking that Cessna be granted an early release from prison.

Cessna was convicted at trial of felonious assault in the early July 13, 2021, confrontation with a Boardman police officer that resulted in the officer shooting Cessna after he charged at the officer while holding a knife. The officer was not injured.

Sweeney sentenced Cessna on June 11 to four to six years in prison. Defense attorney Mark Lavelle asked Sweeney on Aug. 4 to release Cessna from prison early under a provision of Ohio law called judicial release, saying that Cessna was eligible for it.

But Sweeney denied the motion Oct. 8. The request came only about seven weeks after Cessna was delivered to the state prison system.

Sweeney did not give a reason for denying Cessna’s early release. But several days earlier, the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office filed a memorandum objecting to Cessna’s early release on the grounds that Cessna was not eligible for it yet.

The filing stated that under Ohio law, Cessna had to serve at least 180 days in prison before he became eligible because his sentence was for more than two years in prison.

“In this matter, the defendant was delivered to the State Correctional Institution July 29, 2025, and based on his sentence is required to serve 180 days after delivery before he is eligible for judicial release,” the prosecution filing stated.

Apparently prosecutors did not realize this initially because in a Sept. 10 filing, prosecutors stated that they did not object to Cessna being granted judicial release.

At the time of Cessna’s sentencing, he got credit for about one year already locked up in the Mahoning County jail.