HAMILTON, Ohio — A jury found a Butler County man accused of throwing boiling cooking oil on a sleeping woman and her baby guilty.
Judge Greg Stephens sentenced Michael Maloney to 27 years in prison for the attack. The judge tacked on 10 more years because Maloney is now considered a repeat violent offender. He was convicted of killing Leonard Rice with a bat in 1999.
Prosecutors told jurors Maloney bought a bottle of vegetable oil at the Kroger on Erie Boulevard in Hamilton on the morning of Dec. 21. Then, surveillance video from street cameras shows him walking to his cousin, Jayla Witt's, home. They say he got inside, boiled the oil — then went upstairs and threw it on her and her baby as they slept.
The 42-year-old was charged with aggravated burglary and two counts of felonious assault.
Defense attorney Ched Peck told the Butler County Common Pleas Court jury Tuesday during opening statements that the incident was an accident. Assistant Prosecutor Brad Burress said Witt woke up around 7:50 a.m. to a “horrible burn all over her body, and she doesn’t know who came into the house and did this to her.”
Detectives responded to her frantic calls to 911 and saw the severity of her burns. As Hamilton detectives walked up the steps, the smell of vegetable oil got stronger and the bedding was wet with the liquid. A back door window, once covered with cardboard, had been breached.
Maloney told detectives several versions of what happened at Witt’s house, including he wasn’t there, and he was there but heard Witt arguing with someone who ran out of the house, and last that he was cooking breakfast for Witt, walked up 18 steps to the bedroom with the oil and was “startled” when she woke up, causing him to throw the oil on her and the baby, Burress said.
The defense told the jury that Maloney had been living with Witt until shortly before the incident. Peck pointed out prosecutors have no motive for Maloney to assault Witt, whom he referred to as his “niece.”
"She called you Uncle Mike, didn't she? She called you Uncle Mike," the woman's father, James Witt, said while speaking directly to Maloney after the guilty verdict. "Evil. Evil, brother. You need to talk to the Lord before you die."
Judge Stephens told Maloney the attack was "despicable," saying it "suggests that you may not even be a human being."
"You, sir, are an animal," Stephens said. "To think that you would cook the oil, go up 17 steps, throw that oil on a sleeping woman, whether you saw the baby there or not, I don't know, doesn't matter."
Peck said it was accidental.
"He was going to cook for her and she surprised him,” Peck said during opening statements.
The defense attorney also noted Maloney took no measures to hide his identity from security cameras, including in Kroger. And, Peck said, Witt could not identify who had thrown the oil.
Maloney pleaded guilty in 2000 in Butler County Common Pleas Court to voluntary manslaughter for beating a man to death with a baseball bat. Judge Keith Spaeth sentenced Maloney to a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison.
Witt and the baby are continuing to recover from their injuries. She was sitting in the front row of the courtroom during opening statements.
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