23-year-old Douglas Casteel is putting his fate in the hands of a jury after a Tuscarawas County Common Pleas Court judge allowed him to back out of a negotiated plea agreement to resolve charges from a 2018 shooting case. (Tusco TV)

NEW PHILADELPHIA - A 30-year-old former Newcomerstown man who accepted a plea deal to resolve charges from a 2018 robbery turned shooting will be getting his day in court after a common pleas court judge allowed him to back out of that agreement.   

Douglas Casteel pled guilty to all eight counts of his indictment and their accompanying three and five-year gun specifications back in April in exchange for a 17-year sentence recommendation. He filed a motion a month later to withdraw those pleas and have his case go to trial, and during a hearing Wednesday Judge Edward O’Farrell granted that petition. 

Casteel’s defense attorney Donovan Hill said the basis for the request was that his client thought 17 years was unfair compared to the sentence handed down to a co-defendant who went to trial and was found guilty on four counts of an identical indictment.

"He nonetheless believed that the discrepancy between his 17-year term and Mr. [Ian] Cultrona’s 11-year term is too great and too, he believes, onerous given their respective potential liability in the underlying case, that there is an unfair singling out of him."

Hill said vowed to represent Casteel zealously should the judge grant the motion and schedule the case for trial even though he thought taking the case to a jury would not be a wise decision. 

"I believe it is my ethical duty as someone to act in his best interest to advise him against this course of action because were he to get what he wanted, I believe there is a significant likelihood that the outcome would be dramatically worse for him."

O’Farrell ultimately agreed to grant Casteel’s request even though he said it had no legal basis. 

"It’s because if you believe that you should have the opportunity, now for whatever reason, to have a fair-minded jury decide if you’re guilty or not guilty of crimes and firearm specifications, I think you ought to have that opportunity."

A second co-defendant, 23-year-old Lucian Lambes, was also tried and found guilty for his role in the crime and is facing up to 49 years in prison ahead of his sentencing. Casteel could get the same amount of time if the jury returns a similar verdict, and up to seven and a half years on top of that for a pending firearms case set for trial next month in Judge Elizabeth Thomakos' court. Prosecutors agreed to resolve that charge as part of the plea agreement that Casteel backed out of.

TUSCO TV