Youngstown Daily Legal News

Court finds murder conspiracy was not entrapment

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: July 25, 2013

Last week the 2nd District Court of Appeals released a decision affirming the conviction of a man in the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas for conspiracy to commit murder.

Samuel Stein contended his conviction was not supported by sufficient evidence and that it was against the manifest weight of the evidence.

He also argued the trial court should have sentenced him to community control instead of a nine-year prison term.

The court of appeals affirmed the judgment of the county court after reviewing a summary of the case, which indicated that Stein had a romantic relationship with the victim, Nicole Mausolf, from 2004 to 2007.

They had a son together and, following their breakup, Mausolf took Stein to court several times over child support issues.

Stein became romantically involved with Andrea Ramga in 2011 and moved into her apartment in April of that year.

Their romantic involvement ended after a few months but the two continued to live together as roommates.

According to Ramga, Stein began expressing hatred for Mausolf and started discussing a plan to kill her.

Ramga thought Stein was joking until one day he said, “If we do this on a Friday, I have the weekend off so I can clean up.”

Ramga went to the police and met with Miamisburg Police Officer Justin Small to explain that her roommate was asking her to help commit a murder.

She said she was afraid of Stein, who was exhibiting a propensity to kill his ex-girlfriends, a group to which Ramga belonged.

She also feared for her life because Stein’s plan would result in Ramga being one of two surviving witnesses to Mausolf’s murder, which would motivate Stein to “eliminate Ramga as a witness.”

On March 6, 2012, Ramga went to the McDonald’s where Stein worked, wearing a recording device, a “wire,” and told him, “I think I’m in. I think she’s got to go.”

Over the next two days, Stein discussed his plan with Ramga, who was wearing the wire the entire time.

The plan required Ramga to call Mausolf and ask her to come over around 8 p.m.

Ramga was to hide in the bathroom while Stein would shoot Mausolf at close range in the face.

Afterwards, Stein would claim that Mausolf had come into the apartment uninvited and “advanced upon him menacingly,” so that he could claim self-defense.

Presiding Judge Mike Fain noted in the opinion he wrote on behalf of the Second District, “During this entire conversation, Stein expressed no reticence whatsoever about the plan to kill Mausolf.”

On the day of the planned murder, Ramga asked Stein to go over the plan one more time.

He told Ramga he would hide in the kitchen while Ramga let Mausolf in the front entrance.

Ramga would then excuse herself and go in the bathroom and shut the door.

Stein continued, “I’ll take it from there and what happened is, you were in the bathroom. I was in the kitchen getting ready to do some laundry, she barged in, told her to get out, she wouldn’t, I went and got my shotgun and told her to get out, by that time she was closing in on me, I let her have it.”

Following that conversation, the police went into the McDonald’s where Stein had returned to work and arrested him.

Stein was charged by indictment with two counts of conspiracy to commit aggravated murder and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder.

A jury trial resulted in a guilty verdict on all four counts which were merged for sentencing purposes.

Stein’s defense at trial and his argument upon appeal was that he was entrapped.

He claimed Ramga, at the behest of the police, put the idea of planning to murder Mausolf in his mind and that she planned to use Stein’s willingness to kill Mausolf as a basis for evicting Stein from her home.

The Supreme Court of Ohio has defined the defense of entrapment as one “where the criminal design originates with the officials of the government, and they implant in the mind of an innocent person the disposition to commit the alleged offense and induce its commission in order to prosecute.”

However, the state’s highest court also held that entrapment is not established when the government merely affords opportunities or facilities for the commission of the offense and it can be shown that the defendant was predisposed to commit the crime.

“In the case before us, the jury could easily have found from the evidence that the idea of planning to kill Mausolf originated with Stein, not with Ramga,” wrote Fain for the appellate panel.

“But even if one were to conclude that the idea of killing Mausolf was suggested to Stein by Ramga, the recorded conversations clearly show that Stein was not the least bit reticent about killing Mausolf,” Fain continued. “He never indicated any unwillingness or reluctance to do so.”

Since he was a first-time felony offender, Stein held that he should not have received a prison sentence at all.

“But as the state points out, it is presumed that a prison term is necessary for an offender who has committed a first-degree felony,” countered Fain.

Before imposing the sentence, the trial court heard from Mausolf, who spoke eloquently of her fear that Stein might succeed in posting bond before trial, leading to “months of anxiety and hypervigilance, having panic attacks whenever someone knocks at (the) door, and being afraid to leave the house.”

“Samuel was planning to kill me,” said Mausolf. “I have no doubt he would have succeeded had Andrea not come forward.”

Mausolf testified that even worse was the detrimental effect Stein’s crime had on their 6-year-old son.

“It had come to my attention that Samuel had discussed his plan to kill me while in our son’s presence,” said Mausolf, who proceeded to describe changes in her son’s behavior and the fact that he was mildly autistic, which complicated the healing process and caused him to have to see a therapist.

“The fact that my 6-year-old son thinks it’s his fault his father was planning to murder me breaks my heart,” she said.

In a statement read on her behalf by a victim advocate, Ramga implored the court to impose the maximum sentence for Stein, stating she suffered from panic attacks and debilitating fear that Stein will “come after” her when he is released.

“I have changed everything about myself and I still feel scared,” wrote Ramga. “He is smart and capable of almost anything except remorse.”

In imposing the sentence, the trial court noted that Stein had continually denied any involvement in the offense, despite his own words in the recorded conversations.

The pre-sentence investigation report also revealed unsettling evidence that Stein continued to have the perception that, upon his release, he would be living with Ramga again.

The trial court ultimately found that Stein was a “very dangerous individual” who showed no remorse and the court of appeals agreed.

“We find no abuse of discretion in this case,” concluded Fain. “Stein may only have planned to kill one person, but his criminal conduct traumatized his 6-year-old son and Ramga, as well as Mausolf, thereby exacerbating the seriousness of his offense.”

The judgment and sentence of the Montgomery County court was affirmed with Judges Mary Donovan and Michael Hall concurring.

The case is cited State v. Stein, 2013-Ohio-3050.

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