The attorney for a Rockbridge woman who’s serving five years in prison for failing to prevent the death of her medically disabled adult stepson told an appellate court in May that Bobbi Jo McFarland’s trial attorneys failed her. They did so, according to appeal attorney Angela Miller, when instead of arguing themselves for a lesser sentence for their client, they turned that job over to the attorney representing Bobbi Jo’s husband and co-defendant, William McFarland.
“Neither one (of Bobbi Jo’s attorneys) made any arguments on her behalf at the sentencing hearing,” Miller noted during oral arguments before a three-judge panel at Ohio’s Fourth District Court of Appeals. “The attorney that’s doing all the work at the sentencing hearing is her co-defendant husband’s attorney.”
Miller suggested this was especially damaging to Bobbi Jo, because she and William presented very different profiles to a judge considering how to sentence them, and therefore should have argued their cases separately at the sentencing hearing.
Though it’s not unusual for attorneys on the same team to split up the responsibility for presenting different arguments in court, Miller added, “here, (Bobbi Jo’s attorneys) say nothing. And the problem is that Bobbi is not similarly situated as (compared) to her husband. She has a much stronger argument for a lesser sentence, not to be maxed and stacked, than her husband did. Bobbi was a full-time working mother, consistently employed, no significant criminal history at all, while her husband was unemployed, was a registered sex offender and had a criminal history… (But) Bobbi’s attorneys allow her husband’s attorney to argue for both of them, both of the defendants together.”
In July 2023 the McFarlands each agreed to plead guilty in Hocking County Common Pleas Court to two counts each of failure to provide for a functionally impaired person and attempted failure to provide for a functionally impaired person. They had originally been charged with involuntary manslaughter, after William McFarland’s biological son, 30-year-old Joshua McFarland, who suffered from cerebral palsy, died while in their care.
The couple’s guilty pleas gave appointed Judge L. Alan Goldsberry a range of possible prison time he could impose, from none at all, to the maximum sentence on each count, run consecutively, for a total of five years. Though the defense asked for community control probation and no prison time, the judge chose instead to grant the prosecution’s request to “max and stack” the sentences, giving both McFarlands five years behind bars.
This is especially noteworthy considering the particulars of the plea agreement. Both McFarlands took so-called “Alford pleas,” in which a defendant pleads guilty but stipulates that they don’t admit they committed the offense, and are entering the plea only to avoid the risks of a trial. And the prosecution and defense did not submit a joint sentencing recommendation, but instead each argued for different sentences — which, as Miller noted, were at opposite extremes of the severity spectrum.
In addition to speaking up for their client at sentencing, Miller contended, Bobbi Jo McFarland’s attorneys should have countered misrepresentations contained in a pre-sentence investigation report, and made more use of a report provided by an expert medical witness hired by the defense.
The PSI report, Miller said, “portrays Bobbi sort of as the wicked stepmother, a very callous, cold stepmother, and it’s written in that vein That’s not pushed back against. And what is an inaccurate statement (in the report) is that she rebuffed any assistance from any agency.” Not true, Miller said; the McFarlands “did reach out to Hocking County Adult Protective Services and that agency said that they could not help them. So it looks like they didn’t even try to find services to help their son, when that is not true.”
As for the expert defense witness, Miller said, he submitted “a very powerful report,” that could have helped Bobbi Jo’s case, as it pointed out, for example, that someone with severe cerebral palsy like Joshua McFarland’s has a 25% chance of reaching the age of 30 — and Joshua was seven months past that age when he died.
Though some material from the physician’s report was read into the court record, Miller suggested the entire report should have been submitted to the court before sentencing, “so the judge would have an opportunity to review it prior to the hearing.” She noted that she filed a motion seeking to add the report to the case record, but it was denied.
Miller also reiterated the argument from her appeal brief that Judge Goldsberry did not meet the requirements laid out in Ohio statutes and case law for imposing maximum, consecutive sentences in a case like Bobbi Jo McFarland’s. What was required, she said, was for the judge to explicitly go through each of the criteria in the Ohio Revised Code that must be met to allow for maxed and stacked sentences, to offer some analysis as to how and why those criteria are being met, and to do this on the record, during the sentencing hearing, with the defendant present.
Though the judge did say at the hearing that he had considered the criteria in the relevant ORC section, 2929.14 (C)(4), this does not meet the legal requirement defined in the statute, Miller insisted.
“Saying that you considered something does not satisfy that requirement at all,” she told the appellate panel. “It never has, and it doesn’t now.”
Miller has asked that McFarland’s case to be reversed and remanded, and a new judge appointed to decide on her sentence.
The prosecution did not ask to present oral arguments in Bobbi Jo McFarland’s case. In an appeal brief, a Hocking County assistant prosecutor has argued that the record of the sentencing hearing shows the judge “clearly had sufficient information with which to make the statutorily required findings” allowing for maximum, consecutive prison sentences, and that McFarland can’t show that any inadequacies in her trial attorneys’ performance actually created prejudice against her.
William McFarland has also appealed his sentence, but oral arguments have not yet been presented in that case.
Email at jphillips@logandaily.com
Most Popular
Comments / 0