The Sixth Circuit affirmed the convictions and life sentences of Nathan Goddard and Cahke Cortner.

An affirmance is the appeals court's judgment. It is not a new trial. The opinion says the district court sentenced both men to life imprisonment and that the panel rejected their challenges. WHIO and WKEF report Goddard's term as life plus 10 years and Cortner's as life plus five, imposed in September 2024. WLWT does not add those years. WHIO and WKEF say both men are 46. WLWT says 44. The opinion spells the officer Jorge Del Rio. The three stations write DelRio.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided and filed United States v. Goddard on Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. Judge Hermandorfer's opinion says the court rejected Nathan Goddard's and Cahke Cortner's challenges and affirmed. WHIO reported Thursday, Oct. 8, that the Sixth Circuit affirmed the convictions and life prison sentences. WKEF reported the same day that U.S. Attorney Dominick S. Gerace II announced the affirmance. WLWT's story, updated Thursday at 3:28 p.m., reported the convictions and sentences were upheld. An opinion that affirms is the judgment on the appeal.

The opinion says the shooting was Nov. 4, 2019, at 1454 Ruskin Road, during a search-warrant entry. It says Task Force Officer Jorge Del Rio went down the basement stairs, Goddard fired, and one shot hit Del Rio in the head. It says officers took him to a hospital and he died the next day. WLWT reported he went into the basement on Nov. 4, came under gunfire, and was hit and killed, and it did not describe a death the next day. WHIO reported Goddard shot DelRio in November 2019 while trying to keep federal agents from seizing about $500,000 in fentanyl and other drugs. The opinion says the jury rejected Goddard's self-defense account and convicted him of killing Del Rio while engaged in a drug-trafficking offense and of murder of a federal officer. It says Cortner did not shoot Del Rio and was convicted of the killing under co-conspirator liability, because the jury found the killing was a foreseeable part of the drug conspiracy. WHIO reported the court held there was sufficient evidence Goddard acted with premeditation and that the killing was foreseeable to Cortner. Those are the counts the appeal left standing.

The ages and the extra years do not match. WHIO and WKEF identify Goddard and Cortner as 46. WLWT identifies both as 44. The opinion, in the pages that state the facts and the holding, does not give an age. WHIO reported a March 2024 jury convicted Goddard of murder, that both men were convicted of drug and firearms offenses including intentional killing during a drug offense, and that in September 2024 a district judge sentenced Goddard to life plus 10 years and Cortner to life plus five years. WKEF reported those same September 2024 terms. The opinion says the district court sentenced Cortner to life imprisonment and that Goddard, too, received a life sentence. It does not, in that passage, add 10 years or five. WLWT reported both were given life sentences in 2024, that Goddard was found guilty on seven counts, and that Cortner was found guilty on four, including two narcotics counts, a drug-trafficking count that caused death, and a firearm count. A life term in the opinion and a life-plus term in two Thursday stories are both in the record of this case. They are not the same arithmetic.

What the panel turned away is the appeal, not a new set of charges. The opinion says Goddard challenged the search, the exclusion of evidence about the agents' operational plan, and the sufficiency of the evidence on the murder counts. It says Cortner joined the operational-plan argument and also challenged the sufficiency of the evidence, the jury instruction on co-conspirator liability, and the reasonableness of his sentence. The court rejected those arguments. WHIO quoted Gerace: "The Court of Appeals' decision demonstrates there was more than enough evidence and a clear legal basis to hold Goddard and Cortner accountable for the premeditated murder of DEA Task Force Officer DelRio." The opinion also says a third defendant, the homeowner it names as Combs, was sentenced to time served on a charge of maintaining a drug premises. That term is not the affirmance entered Wednesday in Goddard's and Cortner's appeals.