SAGINAW, MI — A former Saginaw attorney who threw numerous dead animals onto a man's driveway will spend nine months in jail.

Saginaw County Chief Circuit Judge Fred L. Borchard on Monday, April 7, sentenced Steven E. Eimers to nine months in jail and five years probation for aggravated stalking.

Eimers pleaded to engaging in actions that harassed Thomas Leddy and his family on multiple occasions in late 2013. Leddy testified at Eimers' preliminary hearing that after finding "mangled" cats at the end of his driveway two mornings in a row, he began finding "quite a few more" animal carcasses, sometimes three or four days in a row.

Eimers is engaged to Leddy's sister, testimony has shown.

Eimers, 52, pleaded guilty to the stalking charge in March, and Borchard indicated after a Cobbs hearing he would hand down a minimum sentence of six months in jail, court records showed.

The sentence length was at the bottom of Eimers' state sentencing guidelines, which were preliminarily scored at the time. The bottom of the preliminarily scored guidelines was six months, but the bottom of the final guidelines was nine months, authorities said.

Eimers' agreement also called for his parole officer to not determine that Eimers violated his parole; if the officer had done so, Eimers would have had to serve a parole violation sentence in prison prior to beginning any sentence for the stalking charge.

Saginaw County Assistant Prosecutor Paul Fehrman on Monday said the Leddy family “expressed their disagreement” with a sentence of jail and not prison and asked Borchard to postpone the sentencing.

Eimers' attorney, Matthew Stephens, said Eimers wanted to proceed with the sentencing, as Eimers was not receiving jail credit because he was on parole at the time of the offense. Stephens added, though, that Eimers was open to some additional supervision “to alleviate some concerns” of the Leddy family.

Fehrman asked for a five-year probation term, and Borchard handed down that term. That probation will include standard conditions as well as special conditions including a no-contact order with any Leddy family member, except Eimers' fiancee and her children.

With Eimers' conviction, the GPS monitoring he was subjected to as part of his parole automatically will extend, his parole officer said Monday.

Saginaw County Sheriff's Sgt. Mark Garabelli testified during the second part of Eimers' preliminary hearing that Eimers confessed to throwing one animal onto Leddy's driveway in Thomas Township but would "clear up the rest of the cases" if he could avoid a felony charge and face possible further parole violations.

A man who testified at the first part of Eimers' hearing reported seeing a man in a Chevrolet Malibu on Dec. 20 throw a dead muskrat onto Leddy's driveway on Gratiot, or M-46, east of North Thomas, and Garabelli tracked the vehicle to Eimers' fiancee, he said.

Garabelli found the vehicle at her house on Dutch in Thomas Township, and saw on the front passenger seat a “fresh” bright red blood stain, he said. The sergeant then looked in the bed of Eimers' pickup and saw a dead turkey, he said.

The Leddys testified their two pre-teen daughters were “very scared” by seeing the animals on their driveway. Stephens, Eimers' attorney, said Monday that the Leddys have secured personal protection orders against Eimers.

Eimers in 2008 was sentenced to a total of seven to 22 years in prison for conducting a continuing criminal enterprise, assault with intent to commit sexual penetration, pandering, possessing with intent to deliver marijuana, possessing Vicodin, possessing Oxycontin, obtaining more than $1,000 under false pretenses, possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony, and two counts of failing to file income taxes. The charges stemmed from three separate cases.

Eimers pleaded guilty to those charges and, in exchange, prosecutors dropped 23 additional charges. The felony convictions meant Eimers lost his law license.

— Andy Hoag covers courts for MLive/The Saginaw News. Email him at ahoag@mlive.com or f

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