Ohio’s top court upholds police officer’s conviction over false arrest of teen

The Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday that cops are not exempt from prosecution under the state’s witness-intimidation law. In a 6-1 decision, the court upheld the 2010 conviction of a former Cincinnati police officer for intimidating a teenage boy into making a false confession for several robberies by threatening to jail his mother and remove his siblings from their home.While the boy spent nine days in juvenile detention, Officer Julian Steele persuaded his mother to meet with him several times, telling her he wanted to discuss her son’s release. Eventually getting her to meet at his apartment, Steele asked her to engage in sexual activity with him. She agreed, telling investigators later that she had complied because she believed “he had the power over (her son’s) release.”During that time, Steele told prosecutors, he knew the boy had not committed the crimes, but he arrested the teen to compel his mother to cooperate with the investigation. A vehicle registered to her had been seen in the neighborhood of one of the robberies. Prosecutors initially thought that the boy had been sent home on the day of his arrest, but after learning he was still locked up, they had him released and charges against him dismissed. Steele was fired from the police department, convicted and sentenced to five years in prison for the abduction and intimidation of the teen.