EATON — An Eaton man learned his punishment on Monday after taking a plea deal.
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Ernest Hatmaker walked into a Preble County courtroom on Monday and was asked by a judge if he had anything to say before his sentencing.
“I just want to thank you and the court for all its time and energy,” Hatmaker said.
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He was sentenced to probation, a $1,000 fine, and payment of court costs.
As previously reported, Hatmaker was convicted of a felony charge of possessing criminal tools.
Last month, he was in court taking a plea deal. In it, prosecutors dismissed the original six counts in this case, all of which were related to child pornography. Hatmaker then pleaded no contest to a reduced charge, and the court found him guilty.
On Monday, the Preble County prosecutor released the following written statement:
Now that State v. (Ernest) Hatmaker has concluded I am able to make an official statement regarding its resolution. I will start by sharing that I too join in the community dissatisfaction with the resolution. No prosecutor ever wants to resolve a case of this nature as we had to in this instance. However, we are sometimes hampered by the rules of evidence, the facts as presented, witness cooperation, and rulings of the Court.
From the outset, we knew the case would be a difficult one to prove at trial. After the federal authorities declined to prosecute the defendant, it was assigned by my predecessor to a very experienced sex crimes prosecutor. He knew that the case would be extremely difficult to prove. This case involved a small number of images likely downloaded from the internet. The images were maintained in an online application, not on any device owned by the defendant. Historically, these types of cases are quite difficult to prove, but we took on the challenge.
Criminal cases rarely stay the same from beginning to end. Some cases get better with time, others get worse. This case unfortunately was the latter. As time went on the case became plagued with witness availability and cooperation issues as well as adverse rulings from the court. Those things, coupled with an extremely technical and difficult set of facts from the beginning, made the likelihood of success at trial dwindle. As such, securing a felony conviction via plea agreement, even if less than desirable, was the best option in light of the circumstances. This position became even more palatable when the Court suggested that the defendant would not be receiving a prison sentence even if convicted on all charges.
This office prosecutes hundreds of cases each year and works tirelessly to seek justice. I share in the community concern over the resolution of this case. That said, we don’t create the facts, evidence, and witnesses, they are presented to us as is. Simply stated, this case fell apart. What the public generally believes should be admissible in court, isn’t always admissible. What the public generally believes to be true isn’t always provable in Court. It is for all of these reasons that the case was resolved via plea agreement.
— Eric E. Marit, Preble County Prosecuting Attorney
Hatmaker and his lawyer declined to speak on camera but released the following statement:
There is a lot of misinformation surrounding this case. The charges against Mr. Hatmaker were dropped. There was great risk in going to trial on these types of allegations – which were never more than allegations, and which the State dismissed.
Mr. Hatmaker has been harshly judged in the court of public opinion without any justification or basis in reality. Simply, Mr. Hatmaker was not convicted of any of the charges filed against him, because he was not guilty of those offenses. The truth is – this was about only six images of alleged pornographic material that a) were never in the possession of Mr. Hatmaker – they were not contained on his cell phone, and there was no evidence that they ever existed there; and b) the State could not prove were illegal.
Mr. Hatmaker and his family look forward to putting this four-year nightmare and these baseless allegations behind them.
— James P. Fleisher, Ernest Hatmaker’s defense lawyer
News Center 7 has been following this case ever since the FBI and Preble County deputies raided Hatmaker’s home near Eaton with a search warrant in June 2022.
When a Preble County grand jury handed up an indictment in the case in May 2024, we learned the FBI was no longer involved.
“They did not feel that it met the threshold for federal charges, so it was turned back over to our investigators,” Preble County Sheriff Mike Simpson said.
News Center 7’s John Bedel has gotten questions about why this case had a visiting judge.
As explained on News Center 7 at 5:30, Preble County is one of the communities that has one Common Pleas Court judge. Right now, that is Judge Martin Votel.
Votel was the county prosecutor when this case was first being investigated and when it was indicted. Because of that conflict of interest, Votel recused himself and the Ohio Supreme Court appointed a visiting judge.
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