Ewing enters pleas to reduced charges

A Holton man whose conviction on charges of rape and other alleged sex-related crimes in two criminal cases was overturned on appeal in 2019 pleaded guilty to two charges of aggravated sexual battery on Friday in Jackson County District Court, according to Jackson County Attorney Shawna Miller.

Jacob Ewing, 26, entered “Alford pleas” — asserting innocence, but admitting that prosecutorial evidence could be enough to sway a judge or jury in favor of conviction — on the aggravated sexual battery charges stemming from incidents that allegedly occurred in 2014 and 2016.

Pursuant to plea negotiations, Miller said that at Ewing’s sentencing, scheduled for Friday, June 18, Ewing will be sentenced to 10 years in prison on one charge and 32 months (two years, eight months) on the other charge, with the sentences running concurrently.

“The parties have agreed that the two sentences will run concurrent to each other, but that the controlling 10-year sentence start at sentencing,” Miller said.

In addition to canceling a retrial on the appealed cases set for the week of July 19, the pleas bring an apparent end to the appeals process in the two cases, in which Ewing was originally convicted in 2017 by a jury on 11 charges stemming from claims made by two women that Ewing had raped and sodomized them. Ewing was sentenced to 27 1/2 years in prison on that conviction.

The appeal, filed by Ewing and his attorney, the late Kathleen Ambrosio, was based on claims that special prosecutor Jacqie Spradling erred in closing arguments by “misstating the evidence that was presented to the jury and inflaming the passions of the jury,” according to the ruling from the Kansas State Court of Appeals that overturned the sentence and ordered Ewing to return to Jackson County for retrial.

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