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Woman returns to face sex charges

WARREN — A former Liberty woman — who in March 2020 was indicted on sex charges involving a 3-year-old — has been brought back to Trumbull County from a federal prison in Arizona to face prosecution in the year-old case.

Candis Wynn, 34, formerly of Lucretia Drive, Liberty, was booked into the Trumbull County jail last week. She is scheduled to be in Trumbull County Common Pleas Judge Ronald J. Rice’s court Thursday for a final pretrial hearing on charges that include three counts of rape that carry possible life sentences, one count of gross sexual imposition, six counts of pandering sexually oriented matter involving a minor, four counts of pandering obscenity involving a minor and four counts of illegal use of minor in nudity-oriented material or performance.

Assistant Prosecutor Gabriel Wildman said his office has been working with federal officials for months to bring back Wynn to face the local charges. Court records show she was video arraigned April 30, 2020, via hookup with Rice’s court and the federal prison. The docket, however, shows no other action has taken place since as local court officials filed document after document trying to get Wynn back to Ohio.

A jury trial is scheduled on Rice’s docket for April 26, but Wildman said he doesn’t know what will happen during the pretrial hearing Thursday. Rice has appointed attorney Jeff Goodman to represent Wynn.

Wynn was given a 25-year federal sentence in 2019 after being found guilty of sexual exploitation of children, receipt and distribution of visual depiction of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct and possession of child pornography. That case, investigated by members of the Liberty Police Department, the Trumbull County Sheriff’s Office, the county prosecutor’s office and Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigations, involved Wynn and another man allegedly trading images of child pornography via cellphones.

In the local case, Wynn is accused of having sexual conduct with a child who was 3 years old at the time as part of the late 2018 and early 2019 offenses.

A Liberty police report on July 17, 2018, reported that a 2-year-old girl at the time was standing outside of the Lucretia Drive home about 8 p.m. wearing only a diaper. No one was at home at the time. The report states the mother of the child, identified as Wynn, returned at 8:22 p.m. exiting a Lyft vehicle carrying a bag of malt liquor. Wynn told police she left the child with her boyfriend, but the man advised police he had been at work in Cleveland all day. The Lyft driver told police he had picked up the woman at the Lucretia home at 7:47 p.m. but was unaware of the child being left alone.

Trumbull County Children Services was contacted and the child’s father came to the home to take custody of the girl. Wynn was arrested that day on a child endangering charge, jail records show. In that case, Girard Municipal Court records show her being fined and given credit for serving 21 days in jail.

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