A hearing scheduled for Wednesday will determine whether he will be released on parole. His expected release date would be Aug. 29, according to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction records.
On Aug. 11, 2008, Ryan Widmer reported he found 24-year-old Sarah Widmer drowned in a bathtub at their Hamilton Twp. home.
He claimed she fell asleep in the tub and drowned.
The defense claimed bruising on Sarah Widmer’s body was from her husband’s attempts to revive her. However, the prosecution claimed Ryan Widmer tried to drown his wife.
Following his first trial in 2009, a jury found Ryan Widmer guilty of murder and not guilty of aggravated murder.
Judge Neal Bronson granted him a new trial, determining experiments conducted by jury members at home violated Widmer’s right to a fair trial.
Jurors reportedly bathed and timed how long it took to dry. When first responders arrived at the Widmer home, only Sarah Widmer’s hair was damp with no wet towels or rags found.
A second trial ended with a hung jury in May 2010.
The 12th District Court of Appeals in Middletown has denied two of Ryan Widmer’s attempts to appeal.
In September 2012, the appeals court denied claims his trial counsel was ineffective and that his Fourth Amendment rights were violated when investigators seized the bathtub as evidence.
The appeal argued his defense was ineffective because they failed to file a motion to suppress the seizure of the bathtub.
The tub was seized as evidence two days after his wife’s death.
A failure to file a motion to suppress does not constitute ineffective assistance of counsel, the appeals court said.
The court said it was “common sense” in an alleged bathtub drowning that valuable evidence, such as latent fingerprints, could be obtained from a bathtub and that officers were entitled to remove the tub once they saw the fingermarks on it.
In a second decision filed in January 2013, the appeals court rejected claims the prosecution withheld evidence of fraud and misconduct by a lead investigator in the case.
Jeff Braley, a former lieutenant with the Hamilton Twp. Police Department, reportedly lied on his job application about his educational and employment experience.
He resigned from the department following an investigation into the application.
“There is no reasonable likelihood that knowledge by the jury that Braley lied about various credentials and whether he filled out the 1996 employment application could have affected its decision on the ultimate issue of whether Widmer was guilty of murdering Sarah,” the appeals court wrote.
The decision also noted Braley was not the only officer who collected evidence at the scene and other officers testified before the jury.
“Braley was not on trial for fraud or misconduct; Widmer was on trial for murder, and examining this part of Braley’s past would only lead to surprise, jury confusion and a waste of time, which are the very reasons for the rule against impeachment on collateral matters,” the decision read.
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