MCCONOUGHEY
A parole violation will bring no punishment for a former teacher convicted of having sex with a student.
At a hearing this week, Judge Mark O’Connor decided to continue community control for former Marysville teacher Stacy L. Boster McConoughey.
Last month, McConoughey, 41, of 4100 Appian Way Court, Apt. Q, Gahanna, admitted she violated terms of her probation by living in a home with at least eight guns and ammunition. McConoughey was on community control, or probation, as part of her sentence for a sexual battery conviction in 2016. A term of her community control is that McConoughey is not allowed to have, control or live in a home with guns. Additionally, probation officials are permitted to conduct checks at her residence.
Probation officer Christopher Miller said that in October the Franklin County Adult Parole Authority did a site check at the home she was sharing with her boyfriend. At the home, officials found a variety of weapons including multiple handguns and rifles as well as a shotgun and ammunition. She was arrested and charged with a probation violation.
Assistant County Prosecutor Andrew Bigler asked the judge to sentence McConoughey to prison. He said the probation department doesn’t, “try to interpret reason or intent.”
Miller said a prison sentence is “the normal recommendation we would give for any felon that has (guns).”
Earlier he said McConoughey could face as many as four years in prison, minus 17 days of jail-time credit.
Bigler added that a prison sentence is “consistent” with the recommendation in other, similar cases.
Defense attorney Sam Shamansky called his client’s actions “inexcusable, but understandable.” McConoughey was living with her boyfriend, a military veteran who owns several firearms.
He urged the judge to consider that McConoughey has been on probation for more than three years and this is her first violation.
McConoughey told the judge it was “an oversight.”
She said that within an hour of her arrest, the guns were out of the home.
“I never used or touched the guns,” she told the judge. “I don’t really like guns.”
O’Connor said there is a good reason probationers are not allowed to have weapons. He cited the fatal shooting of Dayton Police Detective Jorge Del Rio, killed recently serving a warrant as part of a drug operation.
“So, it is a real concern, but every rule has got its exceptions,” O’Connor said.
He said McConoughey has not been in trouble since her conviction and the guns were not hers. The judge said he would continue McConoughey’s probation, under the same terms.
In 2016, McConoughey pleaded guilty to four counts of sexual battery with a student. She was sentenced to 180 days in jail, but ordered to serve only seven. She was ruled a Tier III sex offender and is required to register as a sex offender every 90 days for her lifetime.
Additionally, she was ordered to serve five years of community control and to abide by all the rules and regulations. At the time, the former teacher said she understood the rules, one of which was the prohibition against guns and that she could face a prison term if she violated the terms.
McConoughey was hired by the Marysville Exempted Village School District in May 2001 and began teaching language arts in the 2001-2002 school year.
On May 14, 2015, McConoughey was escorted from the high school after an 18-year-old student came forward and reported to a guidance counselor that he had been having an affair with the teacher.
The student was in McConoughey’s class and served as a classroom aid when in October 2014 she initiated a relationship with him. The student graduated in 2015.
Even though the student was an adult when the information came to light, under Ohio law, teachers are not permitted to have sexual relationships with a student, regardless of the student’s age.
McConoughey resigned just hours before the district’s board of education was scheduled to consider her termination.