Results matching “state v. marcum”
En banc on sentencing
A jury decided that Randy and Clarissa Jones killed their twelve-year-old daughter by failing to get her medical treatment. A judge decided that warranted a 10-year sentence for each of them. A panel of the 8th District decided that a ten-year sentence was too much. The 8th District decided to have an en banc hearing on the scope of what an appellate court can do in reviewing a sentence.
Last week's decision in State v. Jones did provide some clarity, but it's not likely to be the last word.
En banc on sentencing
Randy and Carissa Jones were convicted of involuntary manslaughter and child endangerment for neglecting medical treatment for their 12-year-old daughter. The judge gave them each 10 years in prison, but last year the 8th District reversed, finding that the record didn't support the sentence.
Heaven Robinson pled no contest to five counts of child endangering, and the judge gave her a four-year sentence. She appealed, claiming that the record didn't support the sentence. Last week, the panel affirmed her sentence, ignoring the assignment of error and instead deciding that the sentence wasn't contrary to law: it was within the limits set by the legislature, and the journal entry said that the judge had "considered all required factors of law," and that's all that was necessary.
This is what might be called an intradistrict conflict, and App.R. 26(A) provides a means of revolving that: having all the judges review the decision. And that's exactly what's going to happen: the 8th is reconsidering Jones en banc.
What's Up in the 8th
A long time ago, I summarized the 8th's jurisprudence on search and seizure and hearsay as follows: If you're arrested in Cuyahoga County and you've got a 4th Amendment issue, don't worry, the evidence is going to be thrown out. But if you do go to trial, anything anybody said is going to come in.
And so it goes.
What's Up in the 8th
Perhaps in recovery mode from witnessing the debacle of Ohio State's performance in the Fiesta Bowl or the debacle Mariah Carey's performance on New Year's Eve, the 8th can muster the energy to produce only four criminal decisions last week. Three of them involve sentencing issues. Not surprising; when 95% of cases are resolved by pleas, you're stuck with either plea or sentencing issues, usually the latter.
First up is State v. Kibble. Here's a helpful hint when reading appellate decisions. When the first paragraph tells you that the only relief granted the defendant is a remand "for a nunc pro tunc entry reflecting that Count 65 merged at sentencing with Count 64," it's a good bet that the major damage was inflicted in Counts 1 through 63.
What's up in the 8th
Good news and bad news for criminal defendants in the 8th District last week. Okay, I lied; there is no good news. The State won every case. Still, there's one en banc decision down and one to go, we learn a new concept, and some good, albeit ultimately unsuccessful, work in an appeal. What more could you ask for?
Well, a few more wins for defendants wouldn't hurt.
8th District Roundup
I've frequently commented on how the outcome of a case here in Cuyahoga County can hinge almost entirely on what judge you draw in the arraignment room. The sentencing range for child pornography cases, for example, runs from probation to a couple decades in prison.
Two cases last week, State v. Jones and State v. Pawlak, show that the outcome of an appeal can hinge almost entirely on what judges you draw for your panel.
Case Update - State v. Hand
Your client is charged with aggravated robbery with a gun. The minimum sentence is six years - three for the gun and three for the crime - but the judge indicates he'll consider judicial release, which means that your guy could be out in three years and six months. No, he won't, says the prosecutor: it's mandatory time on a first or second degree felony if you've got a prior first or second degree felony, and your client does. No, he doesn't, you say, because you looked over the LEADS sheet and made sure he didn't have any priors. But it wasn't a felony conviction, the prosecutor says: the reason you didn't find it is because it was a juvenile adjudication, and under RC 2901.08(A), that counts the same as an adult conviction.
Not after that the Supreme Court's decision last week in State v. Hand.
What's Up in the 8th
The 8th District is on pace to handle about 950 cases this year. A large number of them will deal with sentencing issues; of the seven decisions in criminal cases last week, three were on that subject. One way of reducing that number is to hold that some sentencing decisions can't be appealed at all, and the court disposed of two of the sentencing cases last week in just that manner.
What's up in the 8th
The Holy Grail for attorneys representing felony defendants here in Cuyahoga County is the misdemeanor plea. So much of criminal representation involves simple risk/reward analysis, and rarely does that come down on the side of eschewing a misdemeanor and instead going to trial on a felony, especially in a county where judges are allowed to sentence only two misdemeanants a year to jail because of overcrowding there. How well justice is served by this is another matter; as one judge told me, "In this county, innocence is a misdemeanor."
What's Up in the 8th
Two weeks of 8th District decisions, and a day late at that. Among the fourteen cases we find some support for the observation that youth is wasted on the young, the court wrestles with the question of what constitutes an "emergency" for confrontation clause purposes, and another sentencing case.