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2007-1184. State v. Baker, Slip Opinion No. 2008-Ohio-3330.
Summit App. No. 23713. Certified question answered, judgment reversed, and cause remanded.
Pfeifer, Lundberg Stratton, Lanzinger, and Cupp, JJ., concur.
O'Donnell, J., concurs separately.
Moyer, C.J., and O'Connor, J., dissent.
Opinion: http://www.supremecourtofohio.gov/rod/docs/pdf/0/2008/2008-Ohio-3330.pdf
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(July 9, 2008) In a case involving conflicting interpretations of a procedural rule, the Supreme Court of Ohio held today that a trial court’s judgment of conviction in a criminal case is a “final” order subject to review by a court of appeals under R.C. 2505.02 when the judgment sets forth (1) the guilty plea, the jury verdict, or the finding of the court upon which the conviction is based; (2) the sentence; (3) the signature of the judge; and (4) the time stamp showing journalization by the clerk of court.
In April 2007, Jermaine Baker of Akron was convicted by a jury on one felony count of possessing a weapon under disability and one count of obstruction of official business, and was sentenced for those offenses.
The entry made by the Summit County Court of Common Pleas in its journal recording the disposition of the case accurately reported Baker’s convictions and sentences, but did not include an indication of what plea he had entered to the charges at the time of his arraignment. When Baker attempted to appeal his convictions and sentence, the Ninth District Court of Appeals granted a motion by the state to dismiss his appeal on the basis that the trial court’s judgment entry did not meet the requirements of Criminal Rule 32 (C). The court of appeals held that the order was not a “final, appealable order” eligible for appellate review under R.C. 2505.02 because it lacked a statement of the defendant’s plea. The Ninth District subsequently certified that its ruling in Baker’s case was in conflict with a 2002 ruling of the 12th District Court of Appeals in a case raising the same procedural issue. The Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments to resolve the conflict between appellate districts.
In today’s 5-2 majority decision, written by Justice Judith Ann Lanzinger, the Court rejected both the Ninth District’s holding that Crim.R.32(C) requires every judgment of conviction to indicate the defendant’s plea at arraignment and the 12th District’s holding that the requirements of the rule need not be met in a single document as long as the required information is available elsewhere in the trial record.
“The phrase within Crim.R. 32(C) that has caused confusion is that a judgment of conviction must include ‘the plea, the verdict or findings, and the sentence,’” wrote Justice Lanzinger. “The Ninth District has stated that there are five elements that constitute a judgment of conviction: (1) the plea; (2) the verdict or findings; (3) the sentence; (4) the signature of the judge; and (5) the time stamp of the clerk to indicate journalization. In order to satisfy the first element, the appellate court held, ‘The trial court’s judgment entry must comply fully with Crim.R. 32(C) by setting forth the defendant’s plea of not guilty, guilty, no contest, or not guilty by reason of insanity.’ Although this approach may be supported grammatically because in the phrase “the plea, the verdict or findings” the missing comma after the word ‘verdict’ confuses whether ‘the plea, the verdict or findings’ is intended to be a series, Baker’s appeal should not be lost for the want of a comma.”
Pointing out that there is no “verdict or findings” to include in a judgment entry in cases where the defendant has entered a guilty plea, Justice Lanzinger wrote: “A more logical interpretation of Crim.R. 32(C)’s phrase ‘the plea, the verdict or findings, and the sentence’ is that a trial court is required to sign and journalize a document memorializing the sentence and the manner of the conviction: a guilty plea, a no contest plea upon which the court has made a finding of guilt, a finding of guilt based upon a bench trial, or a guilty verdict resulting from a jury trial.”
She concluded: “Announcing that it will not ‘search the record’ to determine what plea a defendant has entered, the Ninth District has required additional language (of an initial not guilty plea, for example) to be added to a judgment of conviction for the order to be entertained as final and appealable. This requirement leads to a more serious problem, for a defendant may be caught in limbo. Unless a defendant in prison were to seek mandamus or procedendo for a trial court to prepare a new entry, appellate review of the case would be impossible.... We now hold that a judgment of conviction is a final appealable order under R.C. 2505.02 when it sets forth (1) the guilty plea, the jury verdict, or the finding of the court upon which the conviction is based; (2) the sentence; (3) the signature of the judge; and (4) the time stamp showing journalization by the clerk of court. Simply stated, a defendant is entitled to appeal an order that sets forth the manner of conviction and the sentence.”
The majority opinion was joined by Justices Paul E. Pfeifer, Evelyn Lundberg Stratton and Robert R. Cupp.
Justice Terrence O’Donnell entered a separate opinion concurring with the majority holding but indicating that in his view “this case is not about placement of a comma. Rather, it is an interpretation of Crim.R. 32(C), which was promulgated to notify a defendant that a final judgment has been entered in a criminal proceeding and that the time for filing an appeal has begun to run.... The occurrence of a trial leads to the ineluctable conclusion that a defendant has entered a plea of not guilty, because we do not conduct trials for those who have entered pleas of guilty. A better reading of Crim.R. 32(C) is to have the trial court delineate the plea when a defendant enters a guilty plea; doing so for a defendant who elects to go to trial has virtually no meaning.”
Chief Justice Thomas J. Moyer entered a dissent, joined by Justice Maureen O’Connor, in which he invoked prior decisions holding that “we first look to the plain language of a statute or rule and apply it as ‘written when its meaning is unambiguous and definite.’... Further, when we consider language used in a statute or rule, we ‘read [] words and phrases in context and constru[e] them in accordance with rules of grammar and common usage.’... Crim.R. 32(C) is not ambiguous, and therefore the majority is wrong to apply its own ‘more logical interpretation’ of the rule. The language at issue in this case is the first sentence of Crim.R. 32(C): ‘A judgment of conviction shall set forth the plea, the verdict or findings, and the sentence.’ Unlike in the majority’s syllabus language... the rule has no comma between ‘the verdict’ and ‘or findings.’ Rather, the first sentence of the rule as written requires three elements that must be ‘set forth’ in the ‘judgment of conviction’: (1) the plea, (2) the verdict or findings, and (3) the sentence.”
The Chief Justice concluded: “(T)he Ninth District Court of Appeals has not required that additional language be included in the judgment of conviction; the court of appeals’ decision has simply required the five elements required by this court’s rule. If the majority’s concern is that the rule creates a ‘more serious problem,’ then we should apply the rule as adopted by this court and request the Supreme Court Commission on the Rules of Practice and Procedure in Ohio Courts to review the issue to determine whether to recommend that the rule be amended.”
Contacts
Donald Gallick, 216.496.3427, for Jermaine Baker.
Richard Kasay, 330.643.2800, for the State of Ohio and Summit County prosecutor’s office.