Saturday, January 16, 1999
Man sentenced to life for raping boy, 8
BY DAN HORN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The first time the legal system took notice of Shaun Zimmerman, his mother was holding him hostage at knifepoint.
He was 3 years old and he waited more than 10 hours before a police SWAT team took his mother away.
Nearly 17 years later, Mr. Zimmerman is the one going to jail for harming a child.
Mr. Zimmerman, now 20, was sentenced to life in prison Friday on charges of fondling and raping an 8-year-old boy in a department store restroom.
“You're one of the most dangerous people in our society,” Judge Robert Ruehlman said during a brief hearing in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court. “This is a terrible, terrible crime.”
Minutes later, the judge called Mr. Zimmerman's mother, Karen, into the courtroom to face contempt charges for an outburst during her son's trial.
The judge agreed to reconsider the contempt charges after receiving information about Mrs. Zimmerman's troubled history, including the 1982 incident involving her son.
He said Mrs. Zimmerman has been diagnosed with manic depression and has been hospi talized several times for mental illnesses.
“She has lots of problems,” the judge said before dropping the contempt charge.
After the hearing, he said he had received a letter from a family friend referring to her 1982 arrest for barricading herself inside her apartment with her son.
According to newspaper accounts of the incident, she threatened to kill herself during the standoff and claimed to be the daughter of Adolf Hitler.
Mrs. Zimmerman received two years' probation and her son was temporarily placed in the care of Hamilton County's children's services department.
While growing up, prosecutors say, Mr. Zimmerman had frequent run-ins with the law. He was on probation for a theft offense when he was arrested on the rape charge in October.
Before the judge sentenced him Friday, Mr. Zimmerman continued to deny he had done anything wrong. He read from a piece of yellow notebook paper as he complained about his lawyer and asked the judge to dismiss his case.
“My attorney betrayed me and now I feel abandoned,” Mr. Zimmerman said. “I ask for the court to have mercy on me. I ask for a judgment of acquittal.”
But the judge refused to dismiss the case and said Mr. Zimmerman's lawyer, David Donnett, had done a good job.
“It was an open-and-shut case,” Judge Ruehlman said. “The evidence was overwhelming.”
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