TIMELINE OF THE RYAN WIDMER LEGAL SAGA
Aug. 13, 2008: Ryan Widmer, 28, of Hamilton Twp. is charged with the murder of his wife.
March 23, 2009: Widmer's trial begins in Warren County Common Pleas Court.
April 2, 2009: After a two-week trial, a jury finds Widmer guilty and he is sentenced to 15 years to life.
April 9, 2009: Following a Pulse Journal interview with juror Ray Diss, defense attorney Charlie Rittgers files a motion for an acquittal or new trial. He maintains jurors improperly relied on information that was not in evidence.
April 10, 2009: Another juror, Jon Campbell, says several jurors improperly conducted experiments at home to see how long it took them to air-dry after bathing.
July 22, 2009: Judge Neal Bronson grants Ryan Widmer a new trial, ruling experimenting jurors violated Widmer's right to a fair trial. Bond for Widmer's release is set at $1 million.
May 10, 2010: The retrial begins. After 16 days and 31 hours worth of deliberations, the jury comes back deadlocked.
July 1, 2010: The defense asked the judge to acquit Widmer and reveals Sarah Widmer has a heart murmur as a child. Prosecutors have always maintained she was perfectly healthy.
Aug. 6, 2010: Judge Neal Bronson denies Widmer's request for acquittal, later the third trial date is set for Jan. 18.
Jan. 26, 2011: The third Widmer jury trial begins. The trial lasts 14 days and ends with a guilty verdict after 12 hours of jury deliberations. Judge Neal Bronson sentences Widmer to 15 years to life in prison.
April 16, 2012: The 12th District Court of Appeals hears oral argument in the first of two appeals filed by Widmer's appellate attorney Michele Berry-Godsey. She argued the police illegally seized the bathtub and prosecutors presented junk science evidence.
Aug. 28, 2012: The 12th District Court of Appeals hears oral argument in the second appeal. Berry-Godsey argued the trial court should have allowed testing of Sarah's DNA to see if she had a rare genetic disease that would have caused her to pass out in the tub.
Sept. 24, 2012: The 12th District Court of appeals denies Widmer's first appeal.
Nov. 7, 2012: Widmer files first appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court.
Jan. 14, 2013: The 12th District Court of Appeals denies Widmer's second appeal.
Feb. 20, 2013: The high court declines jurisdiction on Widmer's case by a 4 to 3 vote.
Feb. 27, 2013: Widmer filed his second appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court.
March 16, 2013: Berry-Godsey files a petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court. It was denied on Oct. 7.
May 22, 2013: The state high court denies Widmer's second appeal.
Aug. 17, 2013: Berry-Godsey files a second petition for a writ of certiorari in the U.S. Supreme Court. It was denied on Oct. 21.
Feb. 20, 2014: Berry-Godsey files a writ of habeas corpus in the U.S. District Court in Cincinnati.
Dec. 2, 2015: Magistrate Michael Merz hears oral argument on alleged constitutional errors in the case in federal district court in Dayton.
A federal magistrate judge will hear constitutional arguments today on whether Ryan Widmer should or should not receive a fourth murder trial in Warren County.
Widmer, who after three trials has been sitting in prison since Feb. 16,2011, is still fighting to get a fourth a trial in order to clear his name. A jury convicted him in 2011 of drowning his wife, Sarah, in the bathtub of their Hamilton Twp. home in August 2008.
Magistrate Judge Michael Merz will hear the case. While he can’t talk about the Widmer case specifically, since it is still pending, he sat down with the Journal-News last week to discuss what a habeas corpus case entails.
The 150-page habeas corpus petition, filed in February 2014, contains six assignments of error and a dozen grounds for relief.
Main arguments by Widmer’s appellate attorney, Michele Berry-Godsey, have been that the home’s bathtub was illegally seized; testimony regarding “prints” on the tub was based on “junk science;” that Widmer should have been allowed to test Sarah’s DNA for a rare genetic disorder; and that the juries should have been told about lead detective Jeff Braley’s alleged misrepresentations of his qualifications.
Merz, who has decided scores of habeas cases, said it is unusual for oral arguments to be held in these appeals because often the prisoners don’t have attorneys. He said his job is to determine whether Widmer’s constitutional rights were trampled through the process of his case.
“They are asking us to declare that the judgment under which Widmer or anybody else is currently serving a sentence, that that judgment is unconstitutional,” Merz said. “That getting to that judgment somehow or another the state violated the constitution.”
Merz said through the decades Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court have chipped away at the issues the federal courts are allowed to consider. One of Berry-Godsey’s main complaints has been the bathtub should not have been seized and if it wasn’t in evidence then the juries would have never heard “junk science” testimony from criminologist William Hillard.
“Had the bathtub been suppressed, all evidence related to the bathtub following its unconstitutional seizure would have also been excluded from evidence,” Berry-Godsey wrote in a brief. “Accordingly, the jury would not have heard Bill Hillard’s “body part impression” testimony that lent the only physical, purportedly “scientific” evidence to fit the state’s theory that Ryan forcibly drowned Sarah and staged the scene to make it appear as though she died alone while taking a bath.”
Senior Assistant Attorney General Maura O’Neill Jaite, who is handling the appeal for the state, said the judge should not consider the bathtub claim at all.
“Widmer did not fairly present or exhaust this claim in state court, no state court remedies remain, and Widmer has not established cause, actual prejudice, or fundamental unfairness that would warrant excusing his procedural defaults,” she wrote. “Widmer’s inexcusable procedural defaults result in a federal habeas review waiver, so Widmer’s second claim should be dismissed with prejudice.”
Merz, not speaking about Widmer, said Fourth Amendment search and seizure claims are generally banned from federal courts’ consideration but he said good attorneys routinely try to argue it.
“The Supreme Court said ‘and by the way you’re not going to get to bring any search and seizure claims in federal court as long as you had a fair opportunity to litigate them in state court’,” Merz said. “Whatever the state court said is the end run.”
Charlie M. Rittgers, who was on the defense team for all three trials, outlined what happened with the tub.
“One of the arguments in Ryan’s habeas petition is that the bathtub should have been suppressed. In the second trial, a motion to suppress the bathtub was filed, but the court did not consider the validity of the motion because it was untimely filed,” he said. “The motion was never refiled in the third trial but was orally renewed at a side-bar conference during the course of the trial. The court overruled the motion, not based on the merits, but rather because it was not timely raised.”
The first verdict in this case in April 2009, delivered after 23 hours of deliberations, was guilty. The crux of the case was when first responders arrived minutes after Widmer dialed 911, the bathroom and Sarah’s body were virtually dry and only her blonde hair was damp. Prosecutors claimed Widmer drowned his wife of four months and then staged his 911 call.
The verdict was tossed out after it was revealed several jurors performed at-home drying experiments and shared their findings with fellow jurors.
The jury in the second trial in 2010 was hung after 31 hours of deliberations. Several jurors said the lack of evidence of a struggle in the tiny bathroom was key and although first responders said the scene was dry, they could tell the magazines that littered the floor had been wet.
The last trial started in January 2011 and after three weeks the jury found Widmer guilty and he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison.
Merz will issue his opinion first and then it will be up to U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black to render the final verdict.
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