On Monday, Assistant Warren County Prosecutor Kirsten Brandt filed a brief in the Twelfth District Court of Appeals calling for Hopkins' resentencing.
“The trial court’s designation of Hopkins’s prison sentence as mandatory was error, and the case should be remanded for a new sentencing hearing,” Brandt said in the brief.
The brief followed one in September by Hopkins’s appellate lawyer, Will Oswall.
No date had been scheduled on Tuesday.
After almost 11 hours of deliberation on March 13, Hopkins was found guilty on 34 of 36 counts of gross sexual imposition involving 27 of the 28 alleged victims and taken into custody.
Prosecutors urged Peeler to sentence Hopkins to a minimum of 27 years.
“We’re very disappointed with an eight-year sentence, given the scope of devastation that Mr. Hopkins inflicted on all of these families and the entire community of Springboro,” Warren County Prosecutor David Fornshell said in an email afterward.
Hopkins' lawyers said 27 years in prison was a sentence more in line with a murder case and suggested in-patient treatment.
The judge ordered consecutive and concurrent terms totaling eight years.
The investigation began after one of the children came home in March 2019 and told her parents how happy she was to have finally gotten to sit on Hopkins' lap.
After months of investigation, including review of hours of school surveillance video, Hopkins was accused of sexually touching 28 girls during his first-grade gym class at Clearcreek Elementary School from December 2018 to March 2019.
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