LISBON — Joseph Boyer, the East Liverpool man sentenced to eight to 12 years for stabbing and injuring a woman in 2022 recently lost his appeal, with an appellate court affirming his conviction.

Boyer, 53, formerly of Ogden Street, filed the appeal last year with the Seventh District Court of Appeals to challenge his conviction for felonious assault, a second-degree felony, and domestic violence, a fourth-degree felony, for the July 7, 2022 attack.

Through his appellate defense attorney, he argued that his trial counsel was ineffective, the jury’s verdict was against the manifest weight of the evidence and the trial court erred in refusing to provide a jury instruction on a lesser charge of aggravated assault, but the three-member appellate judicial panel disagreed with all three claims of error.

Referring to Boyer as the appellant, the judgment document said “appellant’s counsel was not ineffective, the jury’s verdict was not against the manifest weight of the evidence, and an instruction on the inferior-degree offense of aggravated assault was not warranted.”

The judges found Boyer’s arguments had no merit.

Last fall, after a Columbiana County Common Pleas Court jury found him guilty of the charges, Common Pleas Court Judge Scott Washam sentenced him to prison for eight to 12 years for the felonious assault and 18 months for the domestic violence, but to be served at the same time, concurrently. He received credit for 785 days already served since his arrest the day of the incident.

Since the term for felonious assault was indefinite, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections could decide to make him Boyer stay for up to four more years on top of the eight years he must serve.

The prosecution had recommended consecutive sentences, for a total minimum of nine years, which is the sentence Boyer received the first time around in April 2023 after pleading guilty to the charges. A charge of attempted murder had been dropped by the prosecution due to legal issues.

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

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

The judgment entry from the appellant court detailed all the testimony from the trial, including that of the victim and Boyer, whose testimonies differed from each other about how the injuries came about. He tried to claim the victim wasn’t credible because she was drinking the night before and there were inconsistencies in where she said she was sleeping when he came into the house that night. She said he attacked her with a knife from her butcher block and cut her by her throat and collarbone and at some point picked up another knife and stabbed her wrist. He claimed she went into the kitchen and grabbed a knife and he tried to take it off of her and during the struggle he claimed she then reached for another knife.

The appellate court, though, noted the photographs of the victim’s injuries corroborated her testimony, showing slash type wounds.

“It is difficult to believe that these three wounds were the result of a mutual struggle over a knife,” the ruling said.

The ruling also pointed out that when police arrived on the scene, Boyer was attempting to flee from a window. He was covered in blood but was not injured and in jailhouse phone calls to the victim after he was charged, he “essentially confessed to attacking her.” The ruling said the evidence was clear that he knowingly caused physical harm to the victim by means of a deadly weapon.

For the allegation of ineffective assistance of counsel, Boyer tried to claim that his attorney failed to get the domestic violence charge separated from the felonious assault charge and the jury heard evidence about a previous conviction for domestic violence. The appellate court said the defendant was unable to show that the result of his trial would have been different because even without the evidence of the prior domestic violence conviction, the evidence of the felonious assault was so convincing that the result of the trial would not have been different.

The appellate court ruled that the trial court properly denied giving the inferior-offense instruction, agreeing that “there was insufficient evidence of sudden passion or serious provocation by the victim as is required for such an instruction.”

mgreier@mojonews.com