When her husband pushed her in their hotel room and yanked her to the floor by her ponytail in front of their children, she dialed 911 for help.
She gave Perrysburg Township police a detailed account of the abuse and let them examine her injuries. Her husband, Richard Schnabel, was arrested on the spot and denied bond based on his history of domestic violence in their home state of Michigan — he had been convicted of the charge at least three times.
But when it came time to prosecute him, the woman, like so many domestic-violence survivors, didn’t want to cooperate.
“We did some research and found where she was living in Michigan and sent an officer to serve her with a subpoena, and she slammed the door in his face,” said Aram Ohanian, who was the prosecuting attorney on the case at the time but currently serves as a judge in Perrysburg Municipal Court.
In past years, the case may have ended there for lack of victim cooperation. As the common saying goes - no (victim) face, no case. But Perrysburg Township police and Wood County prosecutors are using a new approach to get victims justice even if they don’t seek it for themselves: evidence-based prosecutions.
Domestic-violence cases can be among the hardest to prove because so often the victims involved recant or don’t cooperate for any number of reasons. Sometimes they fear physical retaliation or are financially dependent on their abuser. Other times, abusers threaten to take their children or do other harm. And underlying it all is the love the couple once shared, which brought them together in the first place.
“[The victims have] been intimidated and conditioned so many times by the abuser that we end up losing their testimony,” said domestic-violence instructor Detective Todd Curtis with the Perrysburg Township Police Department.
But that doesn’t mean the abuse didn’t occur, and officials said that at some point they could no longer look the other way.
The Schnabel case demonstrates how authorities rely on evidence to fill in gaps: They had the woman’s 911 call seeking help; proof the two were still living together despite a no-contact order; Schnabel’s history of violence, and numerous recordings where he called his wife from jail to profess his love and reminisce about the life and family they built together.
“You could tell he was trying to convince her not to cooperate,” Mr. Ohanian said.
In other cases, prosecutors also may have photos of injuries, both at the time of the call and days later, to show the progressive bruising, as well as testimony from medical professionals for video from police’s body cameras.
In the end, the evidence was enough. Schnabel was convicted of third-degree felony domestic violence on Dec. 13, 2017, after only one day of testimony and less than two hours of deliberation. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison, of which he served 14. He remains on supervision.
“We’re getting some kind of justice for these victims,” Officer Curtis said. “We’re there for them. We are not going to just stand by and let things continue to happen to them.”
Wood County success
The success story is one of many in Wood County since agencies began using the evidence-based or “victimless” approach around 2008. It was largely spurred by the tragic life and death of Henrietta Foster.
Detective Curtis said officers knew for years that the woman was being abused by her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Daniel Prater. But she would never speak up. He’d be arrested, released, and arrested again without prosecution.
That cycle continued until April 19, 2009, when, shortly after being released from the Wood County jail, Prater found Ms. Foster and strangled her to death. He would die by suicide in jail before going to trial.
The detective said that story stuck with officers who desperately wanted to help the woman.
“There were so many times where we knew that he had beat her up, but we just weren’t having any success [with a conviction] because she was scared,” he said. “How do we let somebody that’s being abused continue to be abused until they’re ready to do something?”
Since switching to victimless prosecutions, Detective Curtis said the township hasn’t lost a single domestic-violence case, though attempts to verify that claim through court records were unsuccessful.
Perrysburg Municipal Court Administrator Scott Howard said his court’s case-management system isn’t able to separate domestic-violence cases to know how many were filed in a given year or their dispositions — dismissed, deferred sentences, plea deals, or convictions. Still in his five years with the court, he said, he can’t think of an example to prove Detective Curtis wrong.
“’The victim didn’t appear’ used to be a very common disposition in the ’80s and ’90s, but not so much anymore,” Mr. Howard said. “I can’t think of a single case since I’ve been here that we’ve dismissed simply because a victim didn’t show.”
Wood County Prosecutor Paul Dobson said it was “rare” for a domestic violence case to even reach the common pleas court because evidence is usually so strong that offenders are pleading out at the municipal level or before trial.
Lucas County following suit
Across Ohio, between 2017 and 2018 there were 69 domestic violence fatality cases, which claimed the lives of 91 people, including three police officers and three children younger than 5, according to numbers tracked by Mr. Curtis.
He’s now teaching proper evidence collection to other smaller agencies across the state to help drive down those numbers. So far, he’s worked with officers from Oregon, Maumee, Perrysburg, Bowling Green, Holland, and a number of area sheriff’s offices.
Lucas County agencies say they’ve also been using a version of it as well.
The Toledo Police Department staffs a single officer dedicated to the city’s thousands of annual domestic violence cases, and though she is attempting to teach better evidence collection for victimless prosecutions, Lucas County Assistant Prosecutor Rebecca Facey says one officer “is not enough.”
Still, it has allowed prosecutors to convict all 13 offenders since 2016 whose victims refused to testify.
“It is taking responsibility and ownership of prosecution off of victims and putting it where it belongs, on prosecutors and the criminal justice system,” Ms. Facey said, adding that victims often refuse to cooperate because they feel guilty for sending a partner or the father of their children to prison.
Most domestic violence trials do have victim cooperation, she said, but since 2016 the county has only had to take 60 cases to trial. That’s because the vast majority of other complaints are either determined to be unfounded and dismissed, or cases are taking pleas, either in common pleas court or municipal court.
She didn’t know the exact number of dismissals, calling it “rare.” Toledo Municipal Court records, though, tell a different story.
Through Nov. 25 of this year, 1,616 domestic violence cases have been filed in the city’s court. Remove the 352 cases that are pending resolution and half of those filings resulted in a dismissal, meaning either the judge or prosecutor decided there is not evidence to move forward, usually leaving the door open to refile charges at another date if new evidence is found. Another 239 cases were nolled, meaning prosecutors declined to pursue criminal charges, records provided by the court show.
That leaves 111 offenders who were convicted of the original charge and 281 who pleaded to amended charges on the domestic violence spectrum.
In previous years, convictions appear more successful:
- In 2016, the city reported 332 convictions and 564 pleas to amended charges.
- In 2017, convictions fell to 191, with 425 amended charges.
- In 2018, numbers fell again to 131 convictions and 343 amended charges. That year, the city dismissed 722 of 1,537 domestic violence cases.
Regardless, Ms. Facey says victimless prosecution is making a difference.
“The mentality has been for so long that if a defendant can get a victim not to show up in court the case will be dismissed. That is not how we’re handling these cases anymore,” Ms. Facey said. “I hope the message gets out.”
The first step toward doing that, Mr. Curtis said, starts with victims speaking up and reporting abuse in the first place, because “these situations don’t get better.”
“Please call the police,” Mr. Curtis urged victims. “It’s not a burden. Call us every time.”
First Published December 13, 2019, 5:38 p.m.
