“He has not seen the sun since Barack Obama was president,” Schuster’s attorney, Bill Gallagher, told WCPO. “In all of my years of practice, I know of no one who has sat there as long as he has sat there.”
After years of delays, U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black ordered Schuster’s release from jail on Sept. 15 because his constitutional right to a speedy trial had been violated.
“I feel like I was almost just kidnapped by the federal government,” said Schuster, who is 38. “One day they came and got me … they took me away from the face of the Earth for seven years and then returned me one day.”
Schuster is now living with his family in Clermont County and trying to rebuild his life.
“It completely ruined my life. I haven’t seen my kids in eight years now or spoken to them or anything. My job was lost. A lot of my friends was lost due to this,” Schuster said.
Schuster’s case is not isolated. Gallagher said it exposed a pattern of extremely slow decision-making by Black on criminal cases since at least 2018. WCPO identified two other cases, including one where a defendant died before seeing an end to his case after nearly four years of inaction.
“His case unfortunately is not unique,” Gallagher said. “But this is federal court, and you don’t have a lot of ability to persuade or push a federal judge to do something if they choose not to.”
Black declined to comment. In an emailed response to WCPO, Black wrote, “The court speaks only through its docket. But thank you for reaching out.”
The U.S. Attorney’s office also declined to comment.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Kyle Healey opposed the dismissal of Schuster’s charges, while simultaneously urging Black, “to resolve all the pending motions so Schuster can be brought to trial,” according to an Aug. 15 court filing.
FBI agents arrested Schuster in 2016 as part of an international sting called Operation Pacifier. The government took over a dark web child pornography site, The Playpen, for two weeks in early 2015. It resulted in nearly 900 arrests worldwide.
The same day that Black issued his order, Schuster was released from the Butler County Jail.
“I was sitting in my cell, and they came across the speaker and just told me to pack it up that, I’m getting released,” Schuster said. “I thought ‘Am I being in transferred or something?’”
Once he stood outside in the fresh air, Schuster said he couldn’t believe it how he felt.
“My mother and my brother came to pick me up, and I gave them hugs instantly,” Schuster said. “That’s the first hug or contact I’ve had with another person in over seven years. You shouldn’t do that to a person.”
Schuster wants to get a job, but he worries that prospective employers will hear about his case and not hire him, despite not having a criminal record.
“I understand the nature of the allegation. It’s alarming and it’s concerning,” Gallagher said. “He was presumed innocent. He’s still innocent. He’s never been convicted.”
Gallagher did not file a complaint against Black in this case because he said it would have been heard by other federal judges, and he didn’t think they would discipline one of their own. Federal judges have life appointments.
While Schuster was in the Butler County Jail, another inmate was dealing with an almost identical situation.
Nicholas Edward Kurtz, now 28, pleaded guilty to cyberstalking an underage girl.
And like Schuster, his key witness in the criminal investigation, Warren County Police Sgt. Larry Cornett, had died while Kurtz was in jail awaiting trial.
“What has transpired in this present case is nothing short of an absolute extinguishment of one’s right to a fair, speedy trial, and the presumption of innocence,” Kurtz’s attorneys, Jon Paul Rion and Eric Nemecek wrote in a March 2022 motion to dismiss, threatening to go above Black to the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals for help.
Rion and Nemeck did not respond to a request for comment.
“To date, Kurtz has been incarcerated for over seven years, pending trial. This constitutes a grave transgression of Kurtz’s ‘presumption’ of innocence,” his attorneys wrote. “Kurtz has already been incarcerated longer than the mandatory minimum sentence required for the pending charges in this case.”
Black denied Kurtz’s motion to dismiss in September 2022, writing, “the court finds the delay has not deprived defendant of his constitutional right to a speedy trial.”
Two months later, Kurtz agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of cyberstalking, which did not require him to register as a sex offender.
In April 2023, after spending more than eight years in the Butler County Jail, Black released Kurtz after sentencing him to time served.
Meanwhile, Abdullah Luqman’s case is still pending on Black’s docket since his indictment in 2018 for selling counterfeit luxury items such as Gucci shoes and Louis Vuitton bags.
While Luqman was released from custody awaiting trial, nearly four years have gone by without a single hearing, decision or court filing in his case.
“While the case is literally still pending, I expect it will be dismissed in the next few days. I just learned a little while ago Mr. Luqman passed away earlier this year,” Luqman’s attorney, Jay Clark, wrote in an email to WCPO.
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