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Appeals court panel upholds bail decision in murder case
KEITH ARNOLD
Special to the Legal News
Published: December 30, 2024
A Franklin County Appeals Court panel upheld a trial court decision to deny bail to a Columbus man convicted on charges related to the shooting deaths of his sister and another woman who were fighting outside of a local bar.
The 3-0 panel of the Tenth District Court of Appeals found in its review of the lower court ruling that there were no release conditions that would reasonably assure the safety of the community if Joseph Howard, 20, was released on bond while awaiting trial.
“The evidence presented at the denial-of-bail hearing showed Mr. Howard recklessly shot his firearm multiple times towards a group of people, striking three people despite only apparently intending to harm one,” Judge Carly Edelstein wrote for the panel. “Although Mr. Howard had a moment to reconsider his actions when his firearm jammed, he instead ejected the misfired live round, shot the intended victim in the head at close range, threatened another man at gunpoint and took his cellphone, and then fled the state.”
Edelstein reasoned that Howard’s “reckless disregard for human life and the law” was convincing proof of the threat he posed to the community, notwithstanding the absence of a criminal history and his ties to the area.
A Franklin County grand jury indicted Howard Oct. 17, 2023, on charges that included aggravated murder, murder, attempted murder, aggravated robbery and firearm specifications related to the incident which resulted in the death of two people and gunshot wound injuries to a third, case background provided.
The prosecuting attorney, on behalf of the state, filed a motion requesting that Howard be held without bail pursuant to R.C. 2937.222.
At his arraignment Oct. 20, 2023, Howard entered a plea of not guilty to all counts and was detained without bail pending a hearing on the state’s denial-of-bail motion.
At the hearing, the state presented testimony from Columbus Police Det. Arthur Hughes about his investigation of the incident, evidence he had gathered and the factual basis for the offenses charged in the indictment.
The trial court subsequently granted the state’s motion to deny bail to Howard while awaiting trial and entered a judgment reflecting that denial on Oct. 31, 2023.
Howard appealed the court’s decision, asserting that the lower court abused its discretion and mistakenly denied him of his right to bail without offering clear and convincing evidence that he posed a substantial risk to any person or the community, summary detailed.
“In its written entry memorializing its decision to grant the state’s motion to deny Mr. Howard pretrial bond, the trial court applied the appropriate standard to the evidence presented when analyzing R.C. 2937.222(B),” Edelstein wrote, citing the following:
“The court finds by clear and convincing evidence that the accused poses a substantial risk of serious physical harm to any person or to the community by shooting in a public place a gun multiple times with little regard for the number of persons present,” the trial court wrote. “He was so reckless in shooting his gun that he shot and killed his own sister. He shot the other victim execution style in the head with no regard for her life. He fired the gun so thoughtlessly that he injured a bystander.
“As such, on review of the record, we cannot say the trial court abused its discretion in finding the state’s evidence clearly and convincingly established that Mr. Howard posed a substantial risk of serious physical harm to the community,” the appellate judge concluded.
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