Ohio man gets probation for beating wife's heroin dealer

Edwin Sobony II had had enough.

It was December 2015, and Sobony's wife was on heroin, which she got from her cousin, according to the Columbus Dispatch.

Sobony had asked the cousin, Larry Jewell, to stay away from their home. But that day in December, Jewell came by, and Sobony picked up an aluminum baseball bat and began to beat him.

Jewell was hospitalized with skull fractures after the incident. In September, Sobony, a mail carrier, was convicted of felonious assault.

Sobony has received his sentence for the conviction: Two years of probation.

The judge, according to the Dispatch, noted the community's support for the defendant during the sentencing hearing.

“I'm not supporting what Mr. Sobony did,” Judge Charles Schneider said. “Vigilante justice is not supported by the court. But the people in this community have just had it.”

Schneider, a judge in the Franklin County Common Pleas, told the court that he frequently receives supportive pre-sentencing letters about defendants — but “not the numbers I've received on this case.”

He mentioned comments posted on the Dispatch's website, including some from readers “wanting to pay his legal bills, wanting to post his bond if I put him in jail. The reaction in the community was immediate, and it's because this community has had it with drugs.”

Sobony could have gone to prison for two to eight years after his conviction, which occurred after a jury deliberated for less than three hours. The Dispatch noted in its report on the sentencing that state law “includes a presumption of prison for the offense.”

Here's the newspaper, explaining the judge's reasoning: “Schneider placed him on probation for two years, saying the presumption of prison was outweighed by Sobony's lack of a criminal record, little chance that he will offend again and the level of provocation that triggered the assault.”

“Judge Schneider is a champion,” Sam Shamansky, Sobony's attorney, said Friday, “and he is not one of those cowards who is influenced by anything other than doing the right thing.”

Shamansky called the judge's decision “perfectly appropriate.”

“You know, in Ohio, even with a beating as severe as this, there's only a presumption of prison, which means you can overcome it,” Shamansky said. “So given my client's background, which was exemplary, his work history, second to none, he busts his (expletive) carrying mail every day, the abject behavior, negative behavior of the victim, and the mitigating circumstances, it was perfectly appropriate.”

As with much of America, Ohio is in the throes of a heroin and opioid epidemic that shows no signs of abating.

In 2015, a record 3,050 fatal drug overdoses were reported in the state, according to the Ohio Department of Health. That grim tally was up by more than 20 percent over the previous year.

“We have heard too many tragic stories about families who have lost a loved one, with their entire life ahead of them, due to what started as prescription drug abuse,” according to Ohio's Opiate Action Team, which was launched five years ago by Republican Gov. John Kasich.

Nationwide, opioids such as heroin and prescription pain relievers killed more than 28,000 people in 2014, more than any year on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least half of all opioid overdose deaths involved a prescription drug, the CDC said, adding that the number of overdose deaths involving opioids has nearly quadrupled nationwide since 1999.

Behind the bleak statistics are haunting scenes of overdose victims.

In September, authorities in the town of East Liverpool stopped a car and found a man and a woman barely conscious in the front seats. The woman's 4-year-old grandson sat in the back seat.

A disturbing photo of the scene — the driver with his head tilted back, the woman slumped across the passenger seat, and the boy staring at what's in front of him — spread like wildfire.

Sobony had repeatedly told Jewell to keep away from the house, according to the newspaper.

He said that he had caught his wife and her cousin doing drugs in the home, in which the couple lived with their children.

“My actions were a little aggressive,” Sobony said during an apology in court. “I'm sorry, but I felt I was protecting my family.”