By Jim Hannah
The Cincinnati Enquirer

COVINGTON - A Kenton County jury will reconvene today to decide whether an Iraqi war veteran should serve time in jail for leading police on a car chase while driving drunk.

Attorneys on both sides spoke at length to jurors about heroism and justice during a sentencing hearing on Monday.

Defense attorney Jennifer Westermeyer pleaded for leniency and recalled the heroism her young client, Spc. Jesse Holden, had shown in battle.

"I ask you not to put him in jail," Westermeyer said. "Send him back to the military. He has already been labeled a problem child and restricted to barracks."

Ken Easterling, chief prosecutor for the Kenton County Attorney's Office, said cutting Holden a break would undermine a cornerstone to democracy - fair and equal justice for everyone.

"To allow someone to come in here and say, 'I'm a soldier, so I'm above the law,' would make a mockery of the legal system," Easterling said. "We have rules of law we apply to citizens, no matter who they are."

The entire sentencing hearing was an oddity because Holden has already pleaded guilty to the charges. In most such cases, a judge usually forgoes the formality of having a jury recommend a sentence.

Holden pleaded guilty earlier in the month to the misdemeanor charges of second-degree fleeing and evading police, leaving the scene of an accident, first-degree driving under the influence, disregarding a traffic control device and not having insurance.

Easterling ask the jury to sentence Holden to one year, the maximum jail time that can be imposed in district court. Westermeyer asked the jury to fine her client and send him back to Fort Benning, Ga., where he faces additional punishment from the military.

The sentencing became even more odd when testimony in the case took the entire day. District Judge Douglas Grothaus sent the jury home at 5:30 p.m. and ordered them to return this morning to begin deliberations.

Controversy over the case began to build weeks earlier, when Kenton Commonwealth Attorney Bill Crockett, whose office prosecutes felonies, agreed to reduce a felony charge of fleeing police against Holden to a misdemeanor. The law that made fleeing police a felony was born out of the death of Covington police officer Mike Partin. He fell to his death in 1998 while chasing a suspect across the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge.

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E-mail jhannah@enquirer.com