Judge admits bias in sentencing of rape case

A Butler County judge's admission that he may have been influenced by personal bias when he sentenced a convicted rapist to 33 years in prison touched off a quiet legal earthquake that could reverberate through a decade of local sex-crime cases. Judge Charles Pater stated in a letter of recusal that his sentencing of Dustin Lawrence, convicted in 2016 of raping a then-girlfriend's 16-year-old daughter, had been affected by an incident in his own life: A member of Pater's family had once been a victim of a similar crime.