For Earle Jay Maiman, State v. Michael Wehrung is the most publicized and controversial criminal case he has ever been involved with. It's also the only criminal case he has ever been involved with.

Earle Maiman worked with James N. Perry to defend Michael Wehrung. (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        Last week, after deliberating for more than 12 hours over two days, a Hamilton County jury found Mr. Wehrung, a 54-year-old grandfather, not guilty of second-degree murder in the 1963 beating death of his then-girlfriend, Greenhills cheerleader Patricia Ann Rebholz. Both were 15 at the time.

        This decades-old murder mystery shattered the calm of the small west suburban village nestled near Interstate 275 and galvanized residents across the Tristate. It also gave Mr. Maiman, a 54-year-old Pennsylvania native, his first entree into criminal law.

        A trial attorney who specializes in business law with the downtown law firm of Thompson Hine LLP , Mr. Maiman had previously handled court cases consisting of private civil suits involving commercial issues.

        And the most significant of those was only significant, he says, because it took four months to conclude.

        His firm represents the roofing company Mr. Wehrung works for. He was asked to take on any criminal defense that might be necessary after authorities identified Mr. Wehrung as a suspect in their 1999 probe of the unsolved case.

        Putting aside his lack of criminal experience, Mr. Maiman says he vowed to stand by his client. And he also enlisted the help of veteran defense attorney James N. Perry.

        After the verdict, prosecutors said they thought they had enough evidence to convict, but that the passage of 38 years had made it easier for the defense to create reasonable doubt.

        Neither Mr. Wehrung nor jurors reached since his Dec 6. acquittal would discuss the case.

        But Mr. Maiman agreed to aninterview Saturday.

        Here are excerpts of what he had to say:

        • On the jury's not-guilty verdict.

        “This was an enormously emotional situation for everybody involved, and they had a very hard job to do. ... (The jury had) gone through a wrenching experience.

        “What counts in the end is that these people spent a long time very, very carefully studying the evidence there was and the evidence there was not.

        “This was a very smart jury ... They were not only very attentive, they were a very well-edu cated jury. They were astute. And when they looked at the hard evidence, they recognized that it wasn't there.”

        • On how his client has been affected.

Mr. Maiman said Mr. Wehrung has suffered considerably — not just during the eight days of trial in Hamilton County's Common Pleas court — but repeatedly during the nearly 40 years since his 15-year-old girlfriend was found beaten to death in a yard across from his boyhood home.

        “Michael Wehrung is not a whiner. He's not someone who's going to walk up and ask people to feel sorry for him. He's not someone who easily complains about the horrible treatment that he has received ... And what was done to him in 1963 was an outrage, in my view. But he's a very good man.”

        • On why he and Mr. Perry opted not to discuss the case out of court, and why they won't discuss what could come next.

        “Just as a matter of general ethics, we believed and do believe that cases should be tried in the courtroom.

        “But starting a public debate about a man's character before a case is tried and you get to the facts is not an ethical thing to do and not what our system of justice is all about. Our system of justice is about evidence presented in a courtroom to a jury of his peers. It's not about people's opinions and rumors and innuendo spread through the media. ... From a general strategic perspective, we thought that was the right thing to do.”

        • On going up against the prosecution.

        “They had a 38-year head start on us. It was the state that investigated this case in the first place. So they had all the fruits of that first investigation. ... They had all of the materials, all of the records, all of the files. Most of which they never shared with us. They were not required ... to turn over all of the statements that witnesses had given back in 1963.”

        • On why Mr. Wehrung didn't testify in his own defense.

        “There were many, many, many things that Michael could have said. But the point of the defense was to win the case. It wasn't necessary to say those things in order for us to win the case.

        “He's not someone who wants to sit there and ask the jury to feel sorry for him. He wanted the case decided on its merits the same as we did.”

        • On who may have killed Patty Rebholz.

        Patty's killer may have been an adult, Mr. Maiman said.

        “It is sort of assumed — for reasons I don't completely understand — that her killer was a child. There's no evidence to that effect, per se ... In many ways, this crime always reminded me more of an adult kind of thing. ... There's no reason to assume that the only kind of person who could have committed this crime was somebody under the age of 20.”

Friday story: Wehrung not guilty

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