A Geauga County man’s silence at sentencing was used against him, a violation of his constitutional rights that the State itself admits. He is still serving 18 to 23 years, because his lawyer never objected.
By Drew Bjerken | Ohio Court Watch | September 2026 | Case: State v. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503 (11th Dist.)
At his sentencing hearing, Charl Bosman said nothing. He had every right to. The Fifth Amendment protects a defendant’s choice to stay silent, at trial and at sentencing alike. The Geauga County judge held it against him anyway, telling the courtroom there was “no demonstration of genuine remorse in this case, inasmuch as Mr. Bosman has not made any statement on his own behalf.”1
Everyone involved now agrees that was wrong. When Bosman appealed, the State of Ohio, the same side that had just defended his conviction, conceded that “the trial court’s consideration of Bosman’s silence at sentencing as evidence of lack of remorse was improper.”2 The Eleventh District Court of Appeals agreed with that concession in writing. And then it upheld his sentence of 18 to 23 years in prison anyway.
That is the puzzle at the center of State v. Bosman: a confirmed constitutional violation, and no remedy for it. The reason is not that the error didn’t matter. It’s that Bosman’s lawyer never objected to it in the room where it happened.
The trial and the sentence
Bosman, an engineer,3 went to trial on 12 counts involving his former spouse and children, including rape, gross sexual imposition, strangulation, and domestic violence. The jury convicted him on four of those counts: two rapes involving his spouse and two counts of gross sexual imposition involving his daughters, who were under 13. It acquitted him of the rest,4 including the strangulation charges his son had described in testimony as feeling “like suffocating.”5
The judge sentenced Bosman to two concurrent terms of 10 to 15 years for the rapes, meaning those two sentences run at the same time, plus two consecutive four-year terms for the gross sexual imposition counts, meaning those two run back to back. Added together, the total came to an indefinite term of 18 to 23 years.6 The appellate opinion notes Bosman had no prior criminal record.7
A right that got ignored, and a rule that let it slide
The Fifth Amendment issue is not a close call, and the Eleventh District said so directly. A sentencing court cannot treat a defendant’s silence as proof he lacks remorse, because doing so punishes him for exercising a constitutional right. Ordinarily, Ohio’s appellate courts have limited power to second-guess how a trial judge weighed the factors that go into a sentence. But the court held that a sentence built on an unconstitutional consideration is different: it counts as “contrary to law,” which is one of the narrow grounds an appellate court can always review.8
So the court had the authority to fix it. It didn’t, because of a separate rule that has nothing to do with the Fifth Amendment: if a lawyer doesn’t object to an error at the time it happens, an appeals court will only reverse if the error was obvious and there is a reasonable probability it changed the result, a standard called plain error.9 Bosman’s trial lawyer never objected when the judge cited his silence. That single missed objection meant the appellate court had to ask a much harder question than “was this wrong.” It had to ask “would the sentence have been different without it.”
The court decided the answer was no. The sentencing record also included the family relationship between Bosman and his victims, the young ages of his daughters, and the seriousness of the harm, all factors the judge was allowed to consider.10 The appellate court also pointed out that Bosman “was not sentenced to the maximum terms” available,11 which it treated as evidence the improper remorse comment didn’t drive the outcome. Bosman is still serving the sentence a judge handed down partly for the wrong reason, because no one asked the judge to reconsider before it became final.
Two more issues, one afternoon in court
Bosman’s appeal raised other claims that the court rejected in the same opinion. He argued that testimony from his family about fear, violence, and control should have been barred as improper “other acts” evidence, the kind of past-conduct testimony that is normally excluded because it invites a jury to convict someone for being a bad person rather than for the crime charged. The court disagreed, holding that the testimony “was not offered to show he had a propensity to commit these types of acts, but that he did commit the acts,”12 so the rule didn’t apply. He also argued his lawyer was constitutionally ineffective, which the court rejected on the ground that “a reviewing court indulges a strong presumption that counsel’s conduct is within the wide range of reasonable professional representation,”13 and that the jury’s verdict forms were legally deficient, which the court rejected because Ohio law doesn’t require the extra language his verdict-form argument relied on for this particular charge.14
What the record does, and doesn’t, show
The opinion identifies Bosman as an engineer and describes a family living together as spouse and children. It does not establish his race, income, wealth, or education beyond that occupation, and none of that should be assumed from his job, his family structure, or the offense itself. The record does support one specific point relevant to sentencing: the court found that Bosman’s role as a parent and spouse gave him access to his victims, and it treated that relationship, along with their ages, as an aggravating factor. That is a conclusion about this case, not a claim about parents, spouses, or engineers generally.
Why it matters
Bosman is not a story about an error getting fixed. It’s a story about a door that closes the moment it opens. The instant the judge cited Bosman’s silence, that was the only chance anyone had to fix it, and his lawyer didn’t take it. The State admitted the violation. The Eleventh District agreed it happened. Neither admission mattered, because Ohio’s plain-error standard doesn’t ask whether a right was violated, only whether the defendant can prove, after the fact, that it changed the outcome, and by the time a case reaches that question, it is almost never enough. The violation was real. The remedy was not, and after sentencing, there is no version of this case where it becomes available again. Every defendant who stays silent at sentencing is risking the same thing: a sentence shaped by an unconstitutional reason, with no court above willing to reopen the door once it’s shut.
That leaves an question hanging over every sentencing hearing: is staying silent still a real right, or just a risk defendants take on faith that no one in the room will use it against them?
Endnotes
1. State v. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503 (11th Dist.), ¶ 27. Full opinion: https://www.supremecourt.ohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/11/2026/2026-Ohio-3503.pdf
2. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 43 (State’s concession).
3. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 7 (identifying Bosman as an engineer).
4. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 25 (jury verdict: guilty on Counts 1, 2, 5, and 8; not guilty on Counts 3, 7, 9, 10, 11, and 12). The original 12-count indictment, including strangulation and domestic violence counts, is described at ¶¶ 1–3.
5. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 16 (testimony of “Son 2”).
6. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 28 (sentence breakdown and 18-to-23-year aggregate term).
7. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 27 (“Bosman has no criminal history”).
8. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 44, quoting the Ohio Supreme Court’s standard that a sentence “otherwise contrary to law” is reviewable even where R.C. 2953.08(G)(2)(b) otherwise limits review of sentencing findings.
9. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 45, applying the three-part plain-error test from State v. Barnes, 94 Ohio St.3d 21, 27, 2002-Ohio-68.
10. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 27, 49 (sentencing factors under R.C. 2929.11 and R.C. 2929.12).
11. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 49.
12. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 41, applying Evid.R. 404(B) (discussion at ¶¶ 36–42).
13. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶ 62, applying Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668 (1984).
14. Bosman, 2026-Ohio-3503, at ¶¶ 52–58, construing R.C. 2945.75(A)(2) against R.C. 2907.05(A)(4) (gross sexual imposition). Note: paragraph 58 of the opinion itself refers to “R.C. 2907.04(A)(4)”; the statute actually at issue in the case, as set out by the court one paragraph earlier at ¶ 57, is R.C. 2907.05(A)(4). That appears to be a typographical error in the court’s own opinion, not in this article.
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.