An appeal made by a man convicted of dismembering a Youngstown woman and storing her body parts in a freezer in a Campbell home to withdraw his guilty plea has been denied.

According to court documents, 37-year-old Arturo Novoa argued that the trial court should have granted his motion to withdraw his guilty plea made prior to his resentencing. 

However, his guilty plea and conviction had both been upheld in his prior appeal, so the trial court did not have any jurisdiction to withdraw his plea.

"This court held that [Novoa's] guilty plea was made knowingly, voluntarily and intelligently; that the trial court was not required to notify [Novoa] of the aggregate maximum sentence he faced and that his conviction and sentence did not violate double jeopardy," read an opinion from the court.

Novoa was convicted of murder alongside 42 other counts including the attempted coverup of the murder, mutilating and hiding the corpse, theft of the victim's vehicle, drug trafficking and engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity.

All of these charges stem from a murder in 2017 when parts of the body of 28-year-old Shannon Graves (pictured below) was found inside a freezer in the basement of a Campbell home.

The freezer was brought to the home after Novoa, under the alias of Anthony Gonzales told a friend that the electricity was out in his home and he had meat in his freezer that was in danger of thawing. Novoa asked if he could bring his freezer into the friend's home, to which the friend agreed.

A few weeks later, Graves' body was found inside a garbage bag in the freezer.

Originally, Novoa was sentenced in June of 2019 to 48 years to life in prison.

This sentence was appealed with Novoa claiming that the trial court's imposition of consecutive sentences was not supported by the record and was contrary to law.

Additionally, Novoa appealed on four other assignments of error such as allegedly not being given credit for time served, him allegedly being denied his right of allocution, the court allegedly failing to pronounce sentence on two of the counts at the sentencing hearing and the court allegedly abusing its discretion to deny his motion to withdraw his guilty plea.

None of these appeals were found to have merit and the conviction was upheld. Novoa was resentenced in 2022 with the same sentence of 48 years to life in prison.

He was remanded for resentencing solely due to sentencing errors regarding merged counts. 

"This court did find that the trial court erred when it merged certain counts at sentencing but also entered specific prison terms for each sentence rather than sentencing once on each group of merged counts," the document read.

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