Court of Appeals grants appeal in Beck case

Ohio's First District Court of Appeals has thrown out 10 of the 13 felony charges former state representative Peter Beck was convicted in 2015.

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge John Andrew West announced his verdicts June 2, 2015 against Beck, who was convicted of three counts of theft, three counts related to securities and seven counts of perjury.

The judge found Beck not guilty on 25 other charges.

Beck, a Mason Republican, was originally indicted on 53 charges and could have faced up to 102 years in prison for alleged securities-related fraud.

Beck had represented the 54th House District, serving parts of Butler and Warren counties. He lost his chance for re-election after being defeated in the 2014 Republican primary.

Beck has been in prison since August 2015 and the appeals court action is likely to end up reducing his four-year sentence – possibly to time served reports WVXU (http://wvxu.org/post/appeals-court-reduces-peter-becks-2015-conviction#stream/0).

According to the Court of Appeals (http://www.hamilton-co.org/appealscourt/docs/decisions/C-150539_12142016.pdf):

"The trial court did not err in convicting Beck of three counts of theft by deception where the six-year statute-of-limitations period had been tolled until the discovery of the crimes, and where the state had filed the theft charges within six years of that discovery. Pursuant to R.C. 1707.28, the five-year limitations period for securities fraud under R.C. 1707.44 begins to run when the violation occurs; there is no exception tolling the running of the limitations period until the discovery of the corpus delicti.

"The trial court erred in finding defendant guilty of three counts of securities fraud under R.C. 1707.44 where the crimes occurred more than five years before the state filed the indictment. Where defendant served subpoenas duces tecum on third parties a month before trial, which requested all forms of communication between 15 separate parties on 11 separate subjects, but did not state with specificity what information was being sought and did not contain a time restriction, the trial court did not abuse its discretion in quashing the subpoenas duces tecum because they were unreasonable and oppressive.

"The trial court erred by convicting defendant of seven counts of perjury where the evidence did not demonstrate that defendant’s answers to the questions were clearly false or where defendant’s answer was to a vague and ambiguous question."

– Judges Sylvia Sieve Hendon, Patrick F. Fischer and Russell J. Mock