CLARK COUNTY — A Clark County judge has made his ruling on the request for a new trial for the 83-year-old man convicted of killing an Uber driver.
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In a decision made on Tuesday, Judge Douglas Rastatter overruled the motion requesting a new trial and an acquittal of William Brock’s conviction.
A jury found Brock guilty of the murder of Lo-Letha Hall on Jan. 14. He was also convicted of felonious assault and kidnapping.
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As News Center 7 previously reported, Brock’s attorney filed the motion on Jan. 20, claiming that there was a clear misinterpretation of Ohio’s Castle Doctrine law and Brock’s self-defense rights.
“The jury was not instructed that they need not deliberate whether the State disproved any element of self-defense when Mr. Brock was presumed to have acted in self-defense,” the filing states. “The jury was not instructed that the State had to prove Ms. Hall was not unlawfully at Mr. Brock’s residence by a preponderance of the evidence in order to rebut the presumption of self-defense.”
Prosecutors filed their response on Jan. 23, stating why they disagreed.
“Defense counsel seeks to rewrite the facts of this trial in his client’s favor despite the facts that were presented. Moreover, defense counsel seeks to change a jury verdict even though the jury received jury instructions that contained accurate statements of the law,” the filing states.
In his decision filed in Clark County Common Pleas Court, Rastatter wrote that the Court conceded that “its castle doctrine instruction was incomplete.”
“Nevertheless, the Court finds that its failure to provide a complete castle doctrine instruction was harmless to the defendant because, upon reconsideration, it finds that he was not entitled to even a partial castle doctrine instruction, and the fact that the Court provided it was an undeserved benefit to him and therefore prejudicial to the State,” Rastatter’s filing later states.
The judge later added that while “the castle doctrine does not cover the facts of this case, the jury was not prohibited from concluding that the defendant acted in self-defense.”
Brock is now scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 30.
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