Two appellate courts upheld decades-long consecutive sentences for men convicted of crimes against children. One dissenting judge says Ohio courts aren’t asking the right question when they stack years on top of years.
By Drew Bjerken | Ohio Court Watch | September 2026 | Cases: State v. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580 (4th Dist.), and State v. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506 (11th Dist.)
“The man I used to know is dead.” the victim told a Pickaway County courtroom. “I will never be myself again.”1 His mother told the judge her son will have “to deal with this reality for the rest of his life.”2
The judge agreed the harm was severe. He sentenced the defendant, Michael Grashel, then 54-years-old,3 to 48 years in prison,4 enough to keep him locked up until he is 102. Four hundred miles away in Lake County, a different judge reached a similar conclusion about Steven Brandel, a 74-year-old man5 who abused his own granddaughters: 15 years, three times what prosecutors had asked for.
Both sentences were affirmed on appeal in the past 18 months. Both show how a small number of individually lawful decisions, when added together, can turn into a sentence that will outlast the person serving it. And both raise a question that Ohio law does not require courts to answer: is a sentence this long consistent with what similar people get for similar crimes?
Two men, two courtrooms, one legal tool
In Grashel, the defendant pleaded guilty to 12 second-degree felony counts of illegally recording minors in states of nudity,7 including a child of one of his own employees.8 The trial court gave him four years on each count and ordered every term served back-to-back rather than at the same time, a practice called a consecutive sentence. The result was 48 years, plus a $13,000 fine and five years of post-release control.9 The Fourth District Court of Appeals affirmed the sentence in February 2025, and the Supreme Court of Ohio later declined to hear a further appeal on June 10, 2025, a decision that leaves the ruling in place without endorsing its reasoning.10
In Brandel, decided September 8, 2026, the defendant, a retired 74-year-old,11 pleaded guilty to three counts of gross sexual imposition against three girls under 13, all of them his granddaughters, over roughly a year between September 2023 and August 2024 in Mentor, Ohio.12 Prosecutors had agreed to “recommend a consecutive total of five years in prison” as part of the plea deal.13 The Lake County judge instead imposed the maximum five years on each count and ran all three consecutively, for 15 years.14
“It was that good old alcohol issue that did me a job on that one,” [RR6] Brandel told the court when asked to explain his conduct. 15
His attorney raised the same point.16 The judge was not persuaded, as the court found the abuse caused “permanent psychological injuries not only to your grandchildren but also to the entire family.”17 The Eleventh District affirmed.18
How judges are allowed to stack years
Ohio law starts from the opposite assumption. Prison terms are supposed to run at the same time, called concurrent, unless a judge makes specific findings on the record. To run sentences consecutively instead, a judge must find that the extra time is necessary to protect the public or punish the offender, that it isn’t out of proportion to the harm caused, and that at least one more specific circumstance applies, such as the crimes being part of a pattern or causing harm so serious that no single sentence could capture it.19
In plain terms, a judge must explain, count by count, why one sentence isn’t enough. Both courts found that the trial judges did that.
That framework splits into two separate questions that get answered very differently. The first is whether each individual sentence is legal on its own; nobody disputes that four years for illegal recording, or five years for gross sexual imposition, is within the range the legislature allows. The second is whether the total, stacked on top of itself 12 or three times over, is justified. Ohio’s appellate courts have made clear they will scrutinize the first question closely and the second one barely at all.
“No single prison term reflects the seriousness”
The dissent in Grashel gets to the heart of that gap. Judge James Brogan (now retired) did not dispute the harm described in the record. He argued instead that Ohio’s sentencing statute promises consistency, and that promise means something only if courts actually compare cases.
“R.C. 2929.11(B) provides specifically that sentences should be consistent with sentences for similar crimes by similar offenders,” Brogan wrote,20 adding that “the comparison of one sentence against other sentences given for similar cases is a useful guide for determining if the court abused its discretion.”21
He pointed out that if Grashel had been charged under Ohio’s voyeurism statute instead, covering similar underlying conduct, “the most he could have received would have been 12 years in prison,”22 a quarter of what he got.
The majority rejected that approach. The consecutive-sentencing statute, the court held, “does not require trial courts or reviewing courts to engage in a comparative analysis of other cases.”23
An appellate court, in other words, is not there to ask whether it would have picked the same number. It can only overturn a sentence if it finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that the trial record doesn’t support the judge’s findings, a high bar that leaves the door open for very different sentences in very similar cases.
Brandel‘s court applied that same narrow standard just over a year later, reviewing the full record, including presentence and psychological reports, and holding it could disturb the sentence only if it “clearly and convincingly f[ound]” that the record didn’t support the sentencing court’s findings.24 It reached the same result: affirmed, with no comparison to what other judges have given other defendants for the same crime.
What the record does, and doesn’t, show
Both opinions describe a relationship of trust that made the crimes possible. Grashel used his position as a business owner to gain access to his victim,25 whose mother worked for him. Brandel’s victims were his own grandchildren, abused over roughly a year. Neither opinion discloses the race, income, education, or financial circumstances of the defendants or the survivors, and this article does not guess at them. Brandel’s claim that alcohol explains his conduct appears in the record as a mitigation argument the court considered and rejected, not as a fact this article treats as an excuse.
Why it matters
The most consequential decision in either case happened at one moment: the decision to run sentences back to back instead of at the same time.
That decision is made by a single trial judge, using discretion the legislature deliberately left broad, and it is reviewed by an appellate court that has told litigants, in writing, that it will not compare their sentence to anyone else’s.
Grashel will not walk free again unless the sentence is later reduced. Brandel, at 74, may not either. Whether either result is just is a question Ohio’s appellate courts have decided is not theirs to answer, and for now, no one else’s either.
Endnotes
1. State v. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580 (4th Dist.), ¶ 11. Full opinion: https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/4/2025/2025-Ohio-580.pdf
2. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 12.
3. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 7 (“Counsel reported that appellant is 54 years of age”).
4. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 15 (four years per count, 12 counts, run consecutively).
5. State v. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506 (11th Dist.), ¶ 4 (“Brandel is a retired 74-year-old with health issues”). Full opinion: https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/11/2026/2026-Ohio-3506.pdf
6. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶ 3 (State’s five-year recommendation) and ¶ 8 (60 months per count, three counts, consecutive, 180 months total).
7. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 3 (guilty plea to counts 16 through 28, second-degree felony illegal-use counts).
8. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 9 (victim D.C. “was the child of an employee of [appellant]”).
9. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 15 (48-to-50-year term and $13,000 fine) and ¶ 17 (five-year mandatory post-release control).
10. Supreme Court of Ohio, Case Announcements, 2025-Ohio-2048 (June 10, 2025), entry 2025-0437, State v. Grashel, Pickaway App. No. 22CA6, 2025-Ohio-580 (appeal not accepted for review): https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2025/2025-ohio-2048.pdf
11. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶ 4.
12. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶¶ 2–3 (three GSI counts, victims described as granddaughters under 13, offenses between September 2023 and August 2024 in Mentor, Ohio).
13. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶ 3.
14. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶ 8.
15. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶ 5.
16. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶ 4 (defense counsel’s mitigation argument regarding alcohol).
17. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶ 7.
18. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶ 20 (“The judgment of the Lake County Court of Common Pleas is affirmed”).
19. Ohio Rev. Code § 2929.14(C)(4) (findings required for consecutive sentences): https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2929.14
20. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 64 (Brogan, J., dissenting).
21. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 63 (Brogan, J., dissenting).
22. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 60 (Brogan, J., dissenting).
23. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 34 (majority opinion).
24. Brandel, 2026-Ohio-3506, at ¶ 15, quoting the standard of review under R.C. 2953.08(G)(2).
25. Grashel, 2025-Ohio-580, at ¶ 9.
Editor’s note: This piece is a news analysis built entirely from the public court record and statutes cited below; it was not independently confirmed with the attorneys, judges, or parties involved.