Dec 29, 2018 3 min read

A Greene County judge denied the appeal by a Crucible man who claimed he had ineffective defense counsel during his March 2017 trial in which he was convicted of sexually assaulting a young girl.

Leonard Glendenning, 51, of 431 E. Fifth Ave., had filed the petition with his new attorney, Gary Graminski, that claimed public defender Harry Cancelmi did not represent him effectively during the trial.

Glendenning was found guilty of sexually assaulting a young girl several times between 2010 and 2014 when she was between the ages of 9 and 14. Greene County Judge Lou Dayich sentenced Glendenning to 2 ½ to five years in prison for aggravated indecent assault, endangering the welfare of a child and corruption of minors.

During the hearing Dec. 10, Glendenning and Graminski argued that Cancelmi didn’t sit down with him to go over the plea deals that were offered.

“There were offers that might have been of interest to Mr. Glendenning,” Graminski said. “I’ve never run into a (defendant) who didn’t know what his offers were.”

They also claimed that Glendenning had provided Cancelmi with a list of 26 witnesses, but only his ex-wife was called to testify on his behalf. Graminski said two juveniles on that list of potential witnesses allegedly claimed that the victim had recanted her story to them, but Cancelmi never interviewed them or called them to testify.

Graminski also argued that Cancelmi didn’t fully investigate Glendenning’s medical condition.

“He had to be impotent or sexually compromised,” Graminski said of the amount of drugs in his system. “There was a general undercurrent that not enough had been done.”

During the hearing, Cancelmi testified that no medical professionals came forward to say Glendenning was impotent or uninterested sexually.

When asked during the hearing if he would have done anything differently, Cancelmi said that he wished he’d spent more time on the case. He added that he wished he had pursued the children who claimed the victim recanted, but he also said that he came to the conclusion that the best defense was a “he said, she said” response.

In his Dec. 19 order denying the appeal, Dayich decided that Cancelmi’s defense was an appropriate approach to the case and denied Glendenning’s request. The order states that a pretrial investigator questioned the juvenile witnesses and “determined that no witness indicated that the victim in this case had recanted her accusations against the defendant.”

The order also states that “considering the witnesses available to the defense,” calling more witnesses to the stand probably would not have changed the outcome of the trial.

“The ‘witnesses’ that Mr. Glendenning intended to call would have established Mr. Glendenning’s character in his household, but they lacked knowledge of the defendant’s reputation in the community, and as such, they would not have been competent character witnesses,” the order states.

Graminski said earlier this month that he would most likely pursue an appeal to a higher state court if the petition in Greene County was rejected.

Regional editor Mike Jones contributed to this story