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Prosecutor won’t appeal decision in Widmer murder case

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By Denise G. Callahan, Staff Writer Updated 7:10 PM Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The prosecution in the Ryan Widmer murder case has cleared the way for a new trial and the defense said it won’t look like the first.

Warren County Prosecutor Rachel Hutzel said Tuesday, Sept. 15 while she believes she has a strong enough case to prevail in the Ohio Supreme Court, out of deference to Sarah Widmer’s family, she won’t file an appeal and they’ll go to trial for the second time against Widmer.

“The uncertainty and the delay are very difficult for the family of Sarah Widmer,” she said. “Circumstances have changed now. The defendant is out on bond and that is also a stress on Sarah Widmer’s family.”

The 12th District Court of Appeals refused last week to hear Hutzel’s appeal of Warren County Common Pleas Judge Neal Bronson’s order for a new trial for Widmer, who is accused of killing Sarah Widmer, his young wife.

Assistant prosecutors John Arnold and Travis Vieux will likely handle the case again when it goes back to trial, Hutzel said. She said she expects they will conduct the new trial like they did the first one, however, with new defense attorneys in place, strategies could change, she added.

One of Widmer’s new attorneys, Jay Clark, said they are just beginning to wade through reams of trial transcripts and files, but he said Hutzel’s team had and has no evidence to convict his client a second time. A former Boston EMT, he said he’ll “shred” the testimony of the first responders and EMTs who testified the first time. And he said he’ll hammer “the fact that Hutzel has no evidence.”

“If she is going to say that the murderer of Sarah Widmer is walking the streets, then you know, come up with some evidence that anything happened to this woman, other than she’s dead,” he said.

Widmer was freed from jail on a $400,000 bond on Sept. 4, a day after the appeals court decision. He has been either in a prison or jail cell since April, when the jury found him guilty of murdering his bride Sarah Widmer in the bathtub of their Hamilton Twp. home last summer. His bond was originally at $1 million, but Bronson lowered it after the appeals court decision.

Jurors came forward after the verdict and admitted some of them experimented at home to see how long it took them to air dry after bathing. A key component of the case was that the drowning scene and the victim, were virtually dry when first responders arrived minutes after Widmer told the dispatcher he had removed his wife from the tub. He did however tell that same dispatcher he had drained the tub prior to dialing 911.

Bronson decided the experimenting jurors — who reported their air drying times to the rest of the panel during deliberations — trampled Widmer’s right to a fair trial because his attorneys couldn’t cross examine the experimenters.

“Dateline NBC” is set to air a story about the Widmer case this Friday, Sept. 18. Hutzel said she is not happy about the decision by “Dateline” producers to air the piece now because she said it might taint the jury pool for the new trial.

“All I can say is they are in the entertainment business and we are in the law enforcement business,” she said.

Bronson has scheduled a conference for Oct. 7. Hutzel said a new trial date could be set at the hearing. But Clark said he thinks Bronson just wants a status report.

Contact this reporter at (513) 696-4525 or dcallahan@coxohio.com.

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