MOUNT VERNON – Last November’s attack by a Mount Vernon resident who allegedly used a machete against a homeless man shocked the community, but last week’s update on the case inspired an equally strong reaction.
In a story that trended No. 1 on the Mount Vernon News website, a jury amazingly found Robert Swint, 38, not guilty of attempted murder, the most serious of the four charges stemming from the attack. He will, however, face prison time for attempted aggravated arson, aggravated assault and felonious assault.
“(Swint) attempted to set fire to the tent of a homeless victim and struck the victim in the head with a machete,” Knox County Prosecutor Chip McConville said in a Feb. 25 Facebook post.
The machete strike left a gash on the victim, Joshua Goheen, 34, requiring 12 staples to close, McConville said. Not only was there physical evidence, but there was also separate eyewitness testimony corroborating some facts of the incident.
So any jury would surely find Swint guilty of attempted murder, wouldn’t they?
Not so fast, McConville explained in an interview with the News.
“Attempted murder requires proof that at the time (of the incident), the defendant had a specific purpose to kill,” McConville said. “And there was conflicting testimony during the trial about what was going on.”
Goheen alleged Swint had made threats against his life, and Swint appeared to follow through with the machete attack. But testimony on the stand from eyewitness Holly Daniels contradicted Goheen’s assertion.
“Holly Daniel’s testimony was quite a display because she obviously didn’t want to be there,” McConville told the News. “She started swearing at everybody in the room: the jury, me, the defense attorneys and the judge. And the judge had to threaten to handcuff her to the chair (so she would) finish her testimony.”
Not only did Daniels contradict the accusation of death threats, Swint himself undermined the charge when he took the stand.
“I didn’t mean to kill him,” Swint allegedly said, according to the prosecutor. “You know, I did these other things, but it was not my intention to kill him.”
As incredible as it may seem, the defense was apparently able to cast reasonable doubt on the attempted murder charge by using the most unlikely bit of evidence: the injury itself.
“One of the things the defense highlighted was that even though the victim had been struck with the machete, the harm from it was not nearly as significant as it could have been,” McConville said. “A machete could take off a limb, and it was only one blow with the machete.”
Not only that, but the tent did not go up in flames, though there were burn marks on it.
“So from that, the jury had to weigh all these conflicting things and answer the question, ‘Do we believe at the time he had the specific intent to kill the victim?’” McConville stated.
But the most interesting missing piece in the case is that the three people involved were ensnared in a romantic triangle. Rather than a random attack, the case could be seen as a crime of passion.
McConville said what triggered the attack was that Swint had seen his former girlfriend’s bike outside Goheen’s tent. His former girlfriend was none other than Holly Daniels. The victim, Goheen, had previously been involved with Daniels before she met Swint. At the time of the attack, Swint and Daniels were trying to win back custody of their child, who is in the care of Children Services, McConville explained.
“The two people who were in the tent, Mr. Goheen and Ms. Daniels, both testified that (Swint) was outside the tent, swinging at the tent with the machete and then trying to light the tent on fire while they were in it,” the prosecutor said.
McConville noted that crimes involving the homeless, whether robbery or assault, are a growing problem in Knox County. Homeless people can be either victims or perpetrators of crime.
“The fact that you have a homeless victim, you’ve already got somebody who is more vulnerable to crime than other populations,” he said. “And that’s what I’m trying to underscore. We’re going to prosecute these cases to support this vulnerable population.”
Meanwhile, Swint awaits sentencing on March 25.
