A Butler man serving a 3- to 6-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2024 to sexually assaulting an 8-year-old girl wants to withdraw his plea and have a trial.

Through a court-appointed attorney, Steven A. Fulmer, 32, asked Butler County Common Pleas Court Judge Joseph Kubit on Tuesday to grant his post-conviction relief petition to withdraw his guilty plea.

Fulmer pleaded guilty on Jan. 30, 2024, to a felony charge of aggravated indecent assault of a person under 13 years old and was sentenced to serve 3 to 6 years in state prison followed by 3 years of probation. Butler police accused him of assaulting the girl between January 2013 and December 2014, and filed the charge Feb. 3, 2022. In addition, he was found to be a sexually violent predator under Megan’s Law and ordered to register with state police for the rest of his life.

On the same day, Fulmer was sentenced to concurrently serve 3 to 6 months in prison followed by six months of probation after pleading guilty to a felony charge of dissemination of explicit sexual material involving a minor filed by Butler Township police. In that case, he sent sexually explicit photos of himself to a 14-year-old girl on her phone through social media, according to testimony.

He also was given a concurrent sentence of time served to six months in prison for violating terms of the probation he was serving for a 2020 simple assault conviction.

Fulmer’s post-conviction relief petition was filed only for the aggravated indecent assault case. He testified Tuesday he wants to withdraw his plea due to ineffective counsel, lack of evidence and failure by his original attorney to talk to witnesses.

He said he met with his original attorney, former assistant public defender Jennifer Popovich, three times while he was being held in the Butler County Prison. He said he wrote four letters to Popovich asking to talk to her about the case, but they didn’t meet.

Fulmer said he was in jail in 2014 and met the girl he is accused of assaulting in 2015. He said he left the area for a period of time after he was released from jail in the Butler Township case and he was not in Butler when the alleged assault took place.

He said he doesn’t know if the date of the assault had been determined and he never saw recorded interviews and statements obtained by police.

Fulmer said he gave Popovich a list of four people who could provide an alibi for him, but she talked to only one of them.

Popovch told him she investigated his claims and told him the plea offer was the best she could get from the district attorney’s office, Fulmer said.

Popovich, who now works for a Pittsburgh law firm, testified she and the public defender’s office investigator tried to determine the date of the alleged crime but were not able to. Prosecutors are not required by law to establish a specific date in sexual assault cases, she said.

A statement from the girl was the only evidence against Fulmer and the time when the assault was alleged to have been committed was in the same time frame as the Butler Township case, she said.

Popovich said she and the investigator were not able to establish an alibi for Fulmer and her investigation ended when he accepted the plea offer.

She said the investigator tried to talk to the people Fulmer listed as alibis, but some did not cooperate and he didn’t talk to all of them.

She said she asked police for a copy of the video recording of their interview with Fulmer, but the plea agreement was reached before she received a copy. She said at one point she did see the recording of Fulmer’s interview and a forensic interview with the girl.

Fulmer was facing a 5- to 10-year sentence for the aggravated indecent assault charge and could have been given a longer sentence due to his prior conviction, Popovich said. She called the 3- to 6-year offer an “extremely good offer.”

Popovich said she told Fulmer about the issues with the case and recommended that he accept the plea offer and explained why he should accept it.

She said Fulmer’s conviction in the Butler Township case would have been “extremely damaging to our case” if it had gone to trial.

Fulmer didn’t raise any issues when she outlined the plea with him on Sept. 25, 2023, when he entered his plea and Judge Kelley Streib accepted it, Popovich said.

Kubit said he will issue a written decision on Fulmer’s petition.

Fulmer is now being represented by attorney Rebecca Black.