A Cheshire County Superior Court judge has reduced the sentence of a former Rindge lawyer who has been convicted of sexually assaulting an 11-year girl girl over a peried of two years.
Jason A. Czekalski, 54, formerly of Rindge, was originally sentenced in 2014 to four 10 to 20-year sentences for three counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault and one count of felonious sexual assualt, according to court documents.
Czekalski, who has maintained his innocence in the matter since the start, had motioned for a new trial, arguing that his lawyer had not adequately defended him.
Judge John C. Kissinger Jr. denied Czekalski’s request for a new trial, writing in his decision that had Czekalski’s lawyer, James O’Rourke, done everything that Czekalski listed in his objection to O’Rourke’s defense, that it would not have likely changed the outcome of the trial.
However, Kissinger did find in Czekalski’s favor on one issue, which resulted in him voiding one of Czekalski’s four 10- to 20-year sentences. Kissinger vacated Czekalski’s conviction on felonious sexual assault. The jury had not been instructed to weigh the evidence for all charges separately, Kissinger found, which resulted in a double jeopardy situation, Kissin-ger wrote in his March 7 decision.
While Kissinger sided with Czekalski’s argument on that issue, on all others, he disagreed, denying Czekalski’s request for a new trial.
Czekalski has appealed his sentence to the N.H. Supreme Court, which has accepted the case, but has suspended proceedings until the resolution of issues on the local level.