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Christian owned and operated Cafe Boulevard (later Boulevard Haus) in Dayton's Oregon District for 15 years. The criminal case involved break-ins and a 2009 fire that Christian reported and which prosecutors said were staged in order to collect insurance money: one break-in at her Washington Twp. home and a reported vandalism and fire at what was then her second restaurant, Cena Brazilian Steakhouse in front of the Dayton Mall in Miami Twp. A jury convicted Christian in 2012 of five counts related to insurance fraud and running a crime ring.
Credit: Jim Witmer
Credit: Jim Witmer
The appeals court judges did not issue an immediate ruling this morning after hearing arguments laid out by Christian’s court-appointed post-conviction attorney, Brock Schoenlein, and assistant Montgomery County prosecutor Heather Jans. Schoenlein argued that Gorman exceeded her sentencing authority when she re-imposed a nine-year sentence even after appeals had reduced the severity of some of the counts on which Christian was convicted. Jans said the judge was well within her sentencing rights and urged judges to keep Christian’s nine-year sentence intact.
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Appeals court Judge Mary Donovan ordered both sides to submit briefs in the coming weeks summarizing their positions, after which the appeals court judges will make a decision “as promptly as possible,” Donovan said.
The appeal of Christian’s conviction has taken a slow and tortuous path through the courts already, bouncing among the Ohio Supreme Court, the 2nd Court of Appeals and Montgomery County Common Pleas court multiple times.
And even if the appeals-court judges rule in favor of Christian — and that ruling is upheld by higher courts — Christian would probably not win immediate release. The case would return to Judge Gorman for re-sentencing, with Christian’s potential maximum sentence lowered from nine to eight years, Schoenlein has said.
If Gorman were to impose an eight-year sentence, Christian’s release date would shift from May 2021 to May of 2020, according to Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections records. Whenever she is freed, Christian — who was born in Croatia and raised in Germany, and has German citizenship — faces the possibility of deportation, Montgomery County prosecutors have said.
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Judge Gorman, when she re-sentenced Christian last year, “addressed how Christian had no regard for other people’s lives or well-being but her own,” assistant prosecutor Jans wrote in her appeals brief. “Christian lied on the stand during trial and claimed everybody else was lying … she hired someone to shoot up her house while her son was still inside the home … (and) hired someone to blow up her restaurant … .”
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At her re-sentencing hearing in July 2016, Christian told the judge she was sorry for the pain she caused family, friends and the employees of her restaurants, whom she said she also considered family. She said she didn’t realize four years earlier how much impact her actions would have on those close to her.
“It has consumed me and is haunting me every day,” Christian said. She urged the judge, “Please give me a chance to be a law-abiding citizen.”
Gorman was not persuaded. The judge noted that Christian tearfully pleaded for leniency four years earlier in the very same courtroom — only at that time, she was still firmly denying that she was guilty of any of the charges against her.
“I don’t know if you’ve really made a change, or if you’re a really good actress,” Judge Gorman told Christian.
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