An Ohio man who was accused of sexually assaulting four girls is not entitled to four separate trials, the state’s highest court ruled on April 3.

Jeremy Reed was charged with rape and gross sexual imposition against four girls during periods when he was living with their mother or grandmother between 2003 and 2020.

Reed asked the trial court to sever the case into four separate trials, but the court denied the motion. He pleaded no contest and was sentenced to 28 to 33 years in prison.

He appealed, and the Fifth District Court of Appeals agreed with him that the trial court had abused its discretion by denying the motion to sever.

“The danger of a jury improperly considering testimony on one offense as corroborative of another alleged offense is significant,” the court ruled.

The state appealed the case to the Ohio Supreme Court, which reversed the decision in an opinion written by Justice DeWine.

“Reed provided remarkably little to the trial court in support of his motion to sever,” he wrote. “He did not identify the theories he intended to pursue at trial. Nor did he articulate any case-specific theory of prejudice.

“Rather, his motion rested on the premise that it is inherently prejudicial to join multiple sex offenses because evidence of one crime might taint the jury in consideration of others,” DeWine added.

Justice Brunner dissented from his colleagues.

“As the court of appeals recognized, the risk of prejudice in this case was elevated by the ‘inflammatory nature of the offenses,” the ‘severe social stigma’ attached to sexually oriented crimes against minors, and the fact that ‘multiple charges against multiple victims inherently has a synergistic effect of prompting jurors to consider each separate allegation as propensity evidence,’” Brunner wrote.