The Supreme Court of Ohio has upheld the involuntary manslaughter conviction of a Clermont County man whose attempt to seal his own decades-old criminal record ended up exposing a homicide case against him. Scott Wilson shook six-week-old Heather Gentry in January 1985, leaving her with severe brain trauma that confined her to a bed for 21 years until her death on December 1, 2006. He wasn't indicted in connection with her death until 2022 — 16 years later — and he argued that the delay violated his right to a fair defense.
The court disagreed, ruling that Wilson failed to show he suffered actual prejudice from the gap between the 2006 death and the 2022 indictment, as reported by WCPO 9 Cincinnati. The Supreme Court of Ohio officially issued the opinion, Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-3988 in Case No. 2025-0322, on Wednesday, authored by Justice Joseph T. Deters, according to Court News Ohio. Wilson had entered a no contest plea to involuntary manslaughter and was found guilty in January 2024, per the station's report.
A Shaking in 1985, A Death Decades Later
According to the Clermont County Prosecutor's Office, Wilson was at the home of a woman and her 6-week-old daughter, Heather Gentry, on January 5, 1985, while the mother showered and left the baby with him. Gentry began crying and then abruptly stopped, the prosecutor's office said, and when her mother checked on her later that day, she found the infant unresponsive and unable to be woken. The mother and Wilson rushed Gentry to a pediatrician, who instructed them to take her immediately to Cincinnati Children's Hospital, per the same account relayed by the station.
The Clermont County Sheriff's Office began investigating Gentry's injuries two days later, and Wilson confessed to detectives that he had shaken the baby, prosecutors said. A Clermont County jury ultimately convicted him of misdemeanor assault under Ohio Revised Code § 2903.13(B) rather than felonious assault, and he served six months in jail along with a $1,000 fine, according to Court News Ohio.
Gentry never recovered. She was unable to walk or communicate and required a feeding tube and around-the-clock care for the rest of her life, the station's report notes. Her grandmother cared for her until the grandmother died in late 2006, according to Court News Ohio. Gentry was then placed in a nursing home, where she died one month later, on December 1, 2006.
An Autopsy, A Dormant File, Then a Records Request
Hamilton County Deputy Coroner Dr. Michael Kenny and neuropathologist Dr. Greg Balko determined Gentry died from the late effects of blunt head trauma, and her case was ruled a homicide, prompting a coroner's inquest referral to Clermont County prosecutors at the time, Court News Ohio reports. Prosecutors took no action on that referral in 2006. The case sat untouched for 16 years, until Wilson himself filed an application in 2022 to seal the court records of his 1985 misdemeanor assault conviction — the request that led prosecutors back to the file and ultimately to a grand jury.
When investigators reopened the case, they recovered Gentry's medical records spanning 1985 to 2005 and located key witnesses, including her mother, an investigating officer, and the hospital admitting nurse, even though other witnesses had died or disappeared in the intervening decades, according to Court News Ohio. That surviving evidence undercut Wilson's claim that the long delay had left him unable to mount an adequate defense.
Court Throws Out 40 Years of Precedent
The majority opinion did more than affirm one conviction — it explicitly overruled four decades of Ohio precedent stemming from the 1984 case State v. Luck, which had allowed defendants to challenge delayed indictments under a burden-shifting test without proving prosecutors acted in bad faith. Under the new standard, defendants must now show both actual, non-speculative prejudice and that prosecutors intentionally delayed charges to gain a tactical advantage, aligning Ohio's constitutional standard with the federal test set by the U.S. Supreme Court in United States v. Marion and United States v. Lovasco, according to FindLaw.
Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy concurred in the judgment only. Justice Patrick F. Fischer went further in a separate concurrence, agreeing Wilson wasn't harmed by the delay but criticizing the majority for discarding four decades of Ohio constitutional jurisprudence. Fischer noted that the prosecutor had not argued in the lower courts for overruling the test, per Court News Ohio.
For involuntary manslaughter tied to an underlying misdemeanor — as in Wilson's case — the offense is a third-degree felony punishable by one to five years in prison, while a felony-based conviction carries a first-degree felony range of three to 10 years, FindLaw notes. The ruling closes the door on Wilson's appeal and leaves his conviction intact, nearly 42 years after the shaking that set the case in motion.
