Adams County court report shows heavy felony caseload, no trials in March

Adams County’s common pleas court spent March pushing a heavy felony docket without sending a single case to trial, a snapshot that says as much about public safety as it does about court capacity. The monthly report recorded 19 felony arraignments, seven felony sentencings and 0 felony trials, a mix that shows serious cases kept flowing through the system even as no jury was seated.

The clearest sign of that pressure came from the sentencing list. David Goodmote, 47, was sent to the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections for 10 months on March 6 after failing treatment in lieu of conviction in an aggravated possession of drugs case. His sentence reflected the county’s continuing drug caseload, but the month’s larger public-safety weight came from the violent felony cases that moved from plea to punishment.

Brian Moser, also identified as Terry Smith III, 23, received the harshest punishment of the month on March 24. After guilty pleas to involuntary manslaughter and two counts of child endangering, he was handed an indefinite prison term of 17 to 22.5 years and a $2,000 fine. The sentence closed one of the county’s most closely watched prosecutions, a case that began when Moser was arraigned on July 3, 2025, on involuntary manslaughter and endangering-children charges in connection with the death of a two-year-old girl. Judge Brett Spencer later cited Moser’s lack of remorse at sentencing.

Richard Boyd, 41, was sentenced the next day, March 25, after pleading guilty to engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, a first-degree felony. He received an indefinite term of 8 to 12 years in prison and was ordered to pay $3,809.27 in restitution. Together with the Moser case, Boyd’s sentence showed that Adams County courts were dealing not just with routine felony filings but with high-level criminal conduct carrying long prison exposure and financial penalties.

The March numbers also fit into a broader pattern of major prosecutions moving through Adams County over many months. David L. Johnson pleaded guilty in March 2025 to the killings of Sharon “Kay” Mozingo and James Shoemaker and the attempted murder of Ryan Roach in Manchester, crimes that left two people dead and another seriously injured. The prolonged Moser and Tien Lynn Hawkins proceedings, with trial dates and plea hearings spread across 2025 and 2026, point to a court system juggling complex violent cases alongside drug and corruption matters. March’s report shows a county courthouse still under real strain, where the absence of trials did not mean a light month, only a different kind of workload.