Ohio prosecutors recently went to court to drop assault charges against a man they had previously accused of attacking the 18-year--old daughter of a murdered New Franklin, Ohio, couple, admitting that the charges were false. They followed that up, however, by hurling new accusations and charges -- for both assault of the daughter and murder of the couple -- against an 18-year-old man. Despite the prosecution's track record of getting the wrong man, a judge imposed a severe and draconian $2 million bail on the newly accused defendant.
While bail is supposed to merely guarantee a defendant's appearance at trial, and while those charged with a crime are presumed innocent under the U.S. Constitution, high bails are often used to keep poor, young and minority defendants incarcerated for months or even years pending trial. In this case, the defendant is a young African-American man.
The prosecutors claim that the teenager used a sledgehammer to kill the married couple inside their residence. Their bodies were recently discovered there by a member of a construction work team engaged in doing a remodeling task on their home. The defendant, according to prosecutors, was the assaulted daughter's boyfriend. News reports did not indicate what, if any, motivation prosecutors are claiming he would supposedly have for such an attack.
Prosecutors had lodged assault charges earlier against a 24-year--old man who they argued had repeatedly stabbed and beaten her. She suffered a serious skull fracture and various stab wounds during the attack. That man was kept in jail from March 26 until April 4 on the false and baseless charges, until prosecutors were forced to concede that they had no real convincing evidence of his involvement in the crime. Prosecutors declined to reveal what the assaulted woman said to investigators following the attack, but clearly, they first charged one man and now another for the same crime.
Source: Ohio.com Akron Beacon Journal Online, "Bond set at $$2 million for suspect in New Franklin slayings; charges dropped against other man," by Jim Carney and Ed Meyer, April 5, 2013