The prosecution rested its case Tuesday after slightly more than one day of testimony in the bench trial of a Medina man accused of leaving the body of his 20-month-old child in a crib for more than a month after her death.
The case is still weeks from an expected ruling, but Medina County Common Pleas Judge Christopher J. Collier said he plans to look at the legal questions in the case involving 34-year-old Eric Warfel of Medina and his daughter, Ember.
ELIZABETH DOBBINS / GAZETTE Eric Warfel sits next to his lawyer Michael O’Shea in court Tuesday.
“It seems like this is a legal issue as opposed to a factual issue,” Collier said.
On the first day of the trial Monday, Warfel waived his right to a jury trial.
Collier — who will rule whether Warfel is guilty or not guilty — requested the defense and prosecution submit written concluding statements next week. He said he will make a ruling the week of June 6.
Warfel was arrested in July last year after an Armstrong Group installer discovered the body of Ember in a Forest Meadows Apartment in Medina. Warfel is facing several felony and misdemeanor charges including gross abuse of a corpse, cocaine possession, tampering with evidence and child endangerment.
The case will resume at 9 a.m. Friday when defense lawyer Michael O’Shea is expected to file a motion for a judgment of acquittal. It is a common request in which the defendant argues that the evidence presented by the prosecution is not enough to justify a conviction.
O’Shea said in a brief interview after the trial that he does not plan to bring in witnesses for the defense.
O’Shea said Monday he will not argue against many of the facts in the case, but will focus on whether Warfel’s actions were punishable by Ohio law.
On Tuesday, O’Shea argued the prosecution was suggesting that more “nefarious” events occurred leading up to Warfel’s reported discovery of his daughter’s body on June 19, 2015, that were not included in the indictment.
“The insinuation has been consistently (that) something nefarious has happened and my client tried to cover it up,” he said.
County Prosecutor Dean Holman rejected O’Shea’s suggestion, but declined to stipulate that nothing “nefarious” had happened.
During testimonies, several members of law enforcement and county Coroner Neil Grabenstetter said the advanced decomposition of the corpse meant that officials could not determine the sex or race. Grabenstetter added that neither he nor a Cuyahoga County examiner were able to cite a cause of death, injuries leading up to death or if the child’s body was moved.
Several witnesses agreed when Holman asked if the decomposition had interfered with their ability to do their job.
Father’s discovery
Detective Sarah Lynn said Warfel told her and other members of the Medina Police Department that he found his daughter dead in her crib the morning of June 19. He said he didn’t report the discovery to police because he did not want to lose custody of his 7-year-old daughter or have to notify his family of the death of another child.
Warfel was the father of Erin Warfel, who died in her sleep at the age of 5 months in 2013.
Lynn said Warfel added that he was concerned police would see drugs and trash in his apartment.
According to testimonies, the apartment was filled with empty food boxes and the toilets contained human waste. The room where Ember was found had dirty diapers next to the crib.
“It’s a crime to be a slob?” O’Shea asked.
Medina police Sgt. Brett McNabb said the unflushed toilets and rotten food in the apartment would be considered neglectful, but O’Shea argued this was not included in the indictment.
Lynn said Warfel told police he unsuccessfully tried to resuscitate Ember when he found her dead in her crib. Shortly after, he and his then
7-year-old daughter entered the room and placed a crucifix on her crib, he told police.
Warfel put boxes in front of the door to keep his older daughter out of the room, Lynn said he told police.
“He indicated he didn’t abuse (the body), but he neglected it,” she said.
According to Lynn, Warfel searched online for information on whether leaving the body unreported was a crime.
“The best he could find is failure to report a crime, but in his opinion a crime had not occurred,” she said.
Cocaine use
Lynn said Warfel admitted to police that he started using cocaine in 2013, then was not taking the drug for a time and started using again after he gained custody of his older child in January 2015.
Cocaine was found in the apartment and at a Motel 6 in Westlake where Warfel was staying when he was arrested.
O’Shea argued Medina city police — who had questioned Warfel for four to five hours following his arrest and did not grant his requests for coffee — never asked Warfel if the cocaine belonged to him.
Lynn said Warfel told her that the cocaine found in his apartment was “old stuff,” which she considered was an admission.
Cocaine also reportedly was found in Ember’s hair follicles, according to court documents, but the discovery was not mentioned in court.
Lynn said Warfel told police he sometimes took his older daughter with him on trips to Cleveland to pick up cocaine. Estimates of drug use varied throughout the interview, Lynn said, but he told police he normally waited until his older daughter was sleepy and would darken the room before using the drug.
Endangering charges
Holman said the three counts of child endangerment were related to times in June and July of 2015 when Warfel reportedly left his older child alone. O’Shea pointed out that none of the child endangerment charges were associated with Ember.
Kenneth Unger, a former neighbor of Warfel’s, testified he saw Warfel’s older daughter running around the halls of the apartment complex about
11 p.m. June 18 — the day before Warfel said he found his younger daughter dead.
“I saw this little girl out there distressed,” he said.
He said the girl told him that when she woke up, her father was gone and she had locked herself out of her apartment.
“She (said) she had tried to wake up her little sister and she couldn’t wake her up,” he testified.
Unger said he and his wife took the girl outside to look for her father’s car, which she said wasn’t there. Warfel returned after about half an hour and later told police he had been at the mailbox sorting letters, Lynn said.
At a later incident, Anne Stevens, a bartender and server at Johnny Malloy’s in Medina, said she saw Warfel leave his older daughter at a table three times for about 20 minutes each. The third time servers searched for her father before he was reported to have walked out of the women’s restroom.
Stevens said the daughter was playing a game on her iPad and seemed unconcerned.
O’Shea suggested the older daughter may have been left alone, but was not actually at risk during either of the incidents.
Prosecutors used messages and cell tower records to suggest the older daughter also had been left alone for about an hour at the Motel 6.
O’Shea argued the records, which did not include the location of the device associated with the daughter, did not prove they were in a different location. But Medina Police Detective Josh Grusendorf, who examined the records, said during his testimony that the content of the messages suggested they were in a different location.
Failure to identify
Two witnesses, who testified they had seen Warfel in the Forest Meadows Apartments complex during the summer, could not identify Warfel, who was sitting at the defense table in the courtroom.
Sgt. McNabb, who was called in directly after the two witnesses, said he recognized Warfel from his interview with him last summer. He added that Warfel looked different than he had last summer, because his hair was slightly longer, he was clean-shaven and he had gained some weight.
O’Shea asked McNabb if he knew he was called in to identify Warfel after the two witnesses had been unable to identify him. McNabb said he was aware of this before he testified.
“One of the reasons you were asked to testify was to clean up two other witnesses (who could not identify Warfel,)” O’Shea said.
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