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LISBON – Two defendants recently sentenced to prison, one for a 2022 knife attack on a woman and one for abusing a child, filed an appeal this week in the Seventh District Court of Appeals.

A jury recently found Joseph Boyer, 52, last known address Ogden Street, East Liverpool, guilty of assault, a second-degree felony, and domestic violence, a fourth-degree felony, for the July 7, 2022, attack in East Liverpool.

Columbiana County Common Pleas Court Judge Scott Washam ordered Boyer to serve eight to 12 years for the felonious assault and 18 months for domestic violence, but to be served concurrently. He was given credit for the 785 days he had already served since his arrest on the day of the incident.

Because the assault term is indefinite, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections could decide to let him remain Boyer for an additional four years on top of the eight years he must serve.

The prosecutor had recommended consecutive sentences, for a total of at least nine years, the sentence Boyer first received in April 2023 after pleading guilty to the charges. An attempted murder charge had been dropped by the prosecutor due to legal issues.

Boyer attempted to withdraw his plea, which the judge denied, but subsequently his conviction was overturned by the Seventh District Court of Appeals, which ruled that the trial court erred in denying the request to withdraw the guilty plea.

The case returned to the Common Pleas Court, this time ending in a jury trial, with a guilty verdict and a prison sentence.

Attorney T. Robert Bricker filed the appeal on Boyer’s behalf, but also asked to withdraw from the case and for replacement counsel to be appointed. The dispositional mention regarding the sentence and the jury’s decision is being appealed.

Also appealing was Melissa Mills, 40, Franklin Avenue, Salem, who was sentenced to an indeterminate term of four to six years in prison for three felony counts of physically abusing a child over a one-month period in 2020.

Mills pleaded guilty in April to second-degree felony child endangerment, assault and third-degree felony child endangerment.

During her recent sentencing, Washam denied her request to withdraw the plea and proceeded with sentencing, ordering that the terms for all three charges be served concurrently, with an indeterminate term of four to six years for the most serious of the two endangering children. counts, 18 months for the other endangering children and three to four and a half years for the criminal attack. She was given credit for three days she had already served in jail.

Mills was charged between May 25, 2020 and June 17, 2020 with alleged child abuse and causing grievous bodily harm to a 4-year-old child.

She had appealed the Oct. 22 ruling, when her request to withdraw the plea was denied and she was convicted. Her trial court-level attorney, Paul Conn, requested that appellate counsel be appointed for her and that the sentence be deferred pending the appeal.

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