Two Lorain County men who were wrongfully convicted of crimes, including murder and child molestation, are receiving nearly $2 million each from the state as compensation.
On Monday, the Ohio Controlling Board approved payments to Joel Covender (released in 2007) and Michael Buehner (released in 2022), according to board documents.
Covender, 56, formerly of Amherst, will receive $2,150,000 from the state for 11 years of wrongful imprisonment. His attorney, W. Scott Ramsey, will receive slightly more than $247,000 in fees, according to board documents and state law.
He was convicted in 1996 of molesting his stepchildren, a boy and a girl, who later recanted their allegations against him. The alleged victims claimed that family members coerced them into lying, or that they lied to please other adults.
In 2007, the Lorain County Prosecutor’s Office dropped charges in the case of Covender’s stepson. During a second trial in 2014, Judge James Miraldi found him not guilty of molesting his stepdaughter.
Two of the three judges who heard the case ruled that Judge James Miraldi improperly denied Covender’s 2013 legal challenge to be declared a “wrongfully imprisoned individual”.
Ramsey, who has represented Covender in his quest for exoneration and compensation since 2007, stated on Wednesday that his client is “glad he’s been exonerated and to some extent compensated” for his conviction and imprisonment.
“That money does not make up for 11 years in prison for something he didn’t do,” Ramsey informed the crowd. “He’s literally been fighting this for 17 years since he’s been out” of prison. “and he’s been fighting this whole thing since the allegations were made in 1993.”
Covender is “happy, very elated.” “It took a long time to get here,” Ramsey explained.
In a second case, Lorain resident Michael Buehner was convicted of murder in Cuyahoga County in 2002 and served 20 years in prison before being exonerated in 2023. The state will pay him a total of $2.3 million, including $1.85 million for Buehner and $450,000 for his attorneys.
Buehner was found guilty of shooting and killing Jerry Saunders, 20, in front of a house on Marah Avenue on Cleveland’s west side on May 24, 2001, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. He was acquitted in a second trial in July 2023.
Buehner, 47, sued Cuyahoga County, members of the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, the Cleveland Police Department, and three former Cleveland police officers in U.S. District Court in July, alleging wrongful conviction and violation of his civil rights.
Furthermore, “Defendants’ misconduct caused Michael Buehner to lose over 20 years of his life to the Ohio prison system and deprived Jerry Saunders’s family of justice against the real killer,” according to his lawsuit.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations:
On May 24, 2001, a driver in a black truck shot Saunders during an alleged drug transaction. Multiple witnesses provided Cleveland police with various racial descriptions of the shooter and his passengers before a confidential informant told a detective that Buehner and Randy Price were involved.
Price and Buehner knew each other from prison, and Buehner owned a black truck similar to the one seen in Saunders’ shooting.
Price, who was arrested and could face the death penalty if found guilty, told police that Buehner was the shooter, and Buehner was arrested.
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office had “closed discovery” at the time, which meant that defense attorneys couldn’t examine its files directly and could only take notes on prosecution evidence at pretrial hearings. That meant they didn’t see the account of another witness who claimed the shooters were Black, despite the fact that Buehner is white.
A witness testified that he and Saunders were selling crack cocaine when Buehner shot him. Buehner’s grandmother provided his alibi, testifying that he was sleeping at home at the time of the murder.
Buehner was found guilty of murder and attempted murder and sentenced to life in prison, with the possibility of parole after 18 years.
The 8th District Court of Appeals upheld the murder conviction but overturned the attempted murder conviction in 2003. Buehner discovered an eyewitness account that his original attorneys had never seen in 2014, and the 8th District Court of Appeals granted him a new trial in 2021.
Price also stated in a 2022 affidavit that he was not present when Saunders was murdered, that he only told police that Buehner shot Saunders to get a plea deal, and that “I did not witness Michael Buehner shoot Jerry Saunders because I was not present.”
“I was told what to say in my statement and what to say during my testimony at trial,” Price explained.
Covender case timeline:
- 1996: A Lorain County Common Pleas jury found Covender guilty of molesting “A.S.,” a 6-year-old girl, and “J.S.,” a 5-year-old boy, both of whom had accused him two years earlier. He was sentenced to 15-to-50 years in prison by Judge Lynett McGough.
- September 2006: Covender’s former stepchildren testified to the Ohio Parole Board on his behalf that he never molested them.
- February 2007: Covender was released on parole after serving nearly 11 years in prison.
- June 2007: J.S., now 18, told Judge James Miraldi he made up the allegations to please his grandparents and that Covender never molested him.
- July 2007: Miraldi granted Covender a new trial in both cases. A court later reversed that ruling in A.S.’s case, “concluding she had not actually recanted her testimony,” only that she said she didn’t recall being molested.
- August 2007: The charges in the J.S. case are dismissed. The Lorain County Prosecutor’s Office refuses to drop the charges in the case involving victim A.S., who was by then 20 years old.
- February 2008: The 9th District Court of Appeals heard Covender’s first appeal, and in April that year denied him a new trial.
- June 2008: Covender filed a seccond motion for a new trial, supported by the girl victim’s biological father. That man alleged his daughter was coerced into lying by her grandmothers.
- June 2009: Prosecutors argued Covender didn’t have enough new evidence to deserve a new trial. Miraldi agreed, and a divided 9th District Court of Appeals upheld his decision exactly a year later.
- December 2012: Covender won a new hearing from the 9th District Court of Appeals.
- April 2013: Covender argued in Miraldi’s court that counseling records proved his former stepdaughter showed a pattern of lying at an early age and that she had been coached by family members to accuse him of molestation.
- August 2013: Covender filed a lawsuit in Common Pleas Court, in which he argued he was a wrongfully-imprisoned individual. He also was granted a new trial on the stepdaughter’s accusations.
- October 2014: At a second trial, Miraldi found Covender not guilty of molesting his former stepdaughter.
- November 2024: Covender reached a financial settlement agreement with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which was signed in January pending final approval by the Ohio Controlling Board.
