Judge won’t reduce bail in Schuylkill kidnapping

A Schuylkill County judge on Friday said he would not consider a bail reduction request by a Barnesville man, charged in the kidnapping, beating and shooting of a Union Township man as he cowered naked in a pond last year.

Jonathan T. Ford, 31, asked Judge James P. Goodman to be released because he has been in jail under $250,000 cash bail since Sept. 30, 2016.

Under a state law known as rule 600, a person cannot be held in jail without being tried longer than 180 days from the date on which the criminal complaint is filed. The person can then be released on nominal bail, usually $1.

But Goodman declined to consider the request because Ford had already been denied release on nominal bail by another county judge, and because Ford had appealed that denial to the state Superior Court, which dismissed it on Nov. 13.

Ford has until Dec. 13 to appeal the dismissal; until then, it remains in Superior Court, not county court.

“He cannot get a second bite of the apple by going before a different judge,” Assistant District Attorney David J. Rice said outside the courtroom.

Ford is represented by James G. Conville.

Judge Charles M. Miller had turned down Ford’s request for release on Aug. 2, citing a danger to the community in his ruling.

Miller cited Ford’s previous offenses, which included simple assault, recklessly endangering another person, fleeing a police officer, and resisting arrest, to which he pleaded guilty on March 25, 2009, and a guilty plea to making terroristic threats on June 21, 2017.

Nominal bail under Rule 600 may be denied in cases in which “no condition or combination of conditions other than imprisonment can reasonably assure the safety of any person and the community,” Miller wrote.

Keeping Ford in jail, he wrote, was the only sure way to “assure the safety of the alleged victim, witnesses, and the community in general.”

Ford was scheduled to be tried on Nov. 1. However, President Judge William E. Baldwin continued the trial after he declared neither side properly prepared.

State police at Frackville say Ford, 31, and his accomplice, Jordan M. Stravinsky, 22, kidnapped Shaun D. Briggs, 34, from his Union Township home on Sept. 29, 2016.

Briggs was forced into a car at gunpoint, then beaten by Ford as Ford drove the car away, with Stravinsky in the back seat.

Stravinsky and Ford forced Briggs to strip, then ordered him into a pond.

Ford fired a gun at Briggs as he cowered in the water, according to court documents.

Ford and Stravinsky then drove to a friend’s house, where they burned Briggs’ bloody clothes before going to a strip club, according to testimony.

Briggs testified at a Dec. 1, 2016, preliminary hearing that he needed 18 stitches for numerous cuts on his face and head, had a fractured skull, a tooth knocked out, a fractured nose, a broken finger, and a broken bone in his wrist.