State v. Young
State v. Young
Opinion
{¶ 1} This is an appeal from a Lawrence County Common Pleas Court judgment of conviction and sentence. Christopher Young, defendant below and appellant herein, assigns the following error for review:
"THE TRIAL COURT COMMITTED PLAIN ERROR BY ACCEPTING A GUILTY PLEA THAT IS MANIFESTLY UNJUST BECAUSE THE RECORD SHOWS THAT NO REASONABLE JURY WOULD FIND CHRISTOPHER YOUNG GUILTY OF FAILING TO NOTIFY THE SHERIFF OF HIS CHANGE IN HIS ADDRESS."
{¶ 2} On May 23, 2017, a Lawrence County grand jury returned an indictment that charged appellant with one count of failure to notify a change of address, in violation of R.C. 2950.05(F)(1). 2 After appellant agreed to plead guilty, the trial court found appellant guilty of failure to notify a change of address and sentenced him to serve seven months in prison. This appeal followed.
{¶ 3} In his sole assignment of error, appellant asserts that the trial court plainly erred by accepting his guilty plea to the offense of failing to notify the sheriff of a change of address. In particular, appellant contends the trial court plainly erred by accepting his plea when no reasonable juror would have found appellant guilty of the offense for the following reason: a prior juvenile adjudication cannot serve as a predicate for the offense of failing to notify under R.C. 2950.05(F)(1). Appellant thus contends that permitting a prior juvenile adjudication to serve as an element of an offense committed as an adult violates his right to due process of law.
{¶ 4} First, we note that appellant did not raise this issue during the trial court proceedings. Thus, appellant forfeited the right to raise the issue on appeal. It is well-established that " ' "an appellate court will not consider any error which counsel for a party complaining of the trial court's judgment could have called but did not call to the trial court's attention at a time when such error could have been
avoided or corrected by the trial court." ' "
State v. Quarterman
,
{¶ 5} In the case sub judice, we believe that appellant's failure to raise the issue in the trial court results in the forfeiture of his right to now challenge the validity of using a prior juvenile adjudication as the basis for an R.C. 2950.05(E)(1) conviction. Nevertheless, even if we considered appellant's argument, we find it meritless.
Hill v. Urbana
,
{¶ 6} In the case at bar, appellant argues that using his juvenile adjudication as the predicate for the offense of failure-to-notify under R.C. 2950.05(F)(1) violates his due process rights as explained in
State v. Hand
,
however. The trial court thus looked to R.C. 2901.08(A), entitled "Delinquency adjudications deemed convictions." The statute stated that a prior delinquency adjudication "is a conviction" for purposes of determining the offense to be charged and the sentence to be imposed. Id. at ¶ 9. The trial court essentially determined that the two statutes meant that "a juvenile adjudication counts as a previous conviction that can enhance either the degree of a later offense or a subsequent sentence to include mandatory prison time." Id. at ¶ 9. The defendant appealed, and the Second District Court of Appeals affirmed the trial court's judgment.
{¶ 7} On appeal to the Ohio Supreme Court, the defendant asserted that using a prior juvenile adjudication to enhance his sentence violated his due process rights. The Ohio Supreme Court agreed. The court determined that treating a prior delinquency adjudication as a conviction for sentence-enhancement purposes contravened the United States Supreme Court's decisions in
Apprendi v. New Jersey
,
{¶ 8} The Hand court applied Apprendi and Alleyne and concluded that "[b]ecause a juvenile adjudication is not established through a procedure that provides the right to a jury trial, it cannot be used to increase a sentence beyond a statutory maximum or mandatory minimum." Id. at ¶ 34. The court thus held:
R.C. 2901.08(A) violates the Due Process Clauses of Article I, Section 16 of the Ohio Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution because it is fundamentally unfair to treat a juvenile adjudication as a previous conviction that enhances either the degree of or the sentence for a subsequent offense committed as an adult.
Id. at paragraph one of the syllabus.
{¶ 9} Recently, the Ohio Supreme Court re-examined
Hand
and held that using a prior juvenile delinquency adjudication as an element of the offense of having a weapon under a disability does not offend the Due Process Clause.
State v. Carnes
,
{¶ 10} In
Carnes
, the court determined that using a prior juvenile delinquency adjudication as an element of the offense of having a weapon under a disability (WUD) does not violate due process, in part, because the WUD statute, unlike the statute that the court considered in
Hand
, does not explicitly state that a prior juvenile adjudication is a conviction.
Id.
at ¶¶ 8-9. Instead, the weapons-under-disability statute "lists several discrete, alternative disability conditions, including but not limited to certain juvenile adjudications and adult convictions."
Id.
at ¶ 9. The court also noted
that the WUD statute "does not use juvenile adjudications for sentence-enhancement purposes."
Id.
at ¶ 10. Rather, "[r]egardless of the predicate conduct, a violation of the statute is a third-degree felony."
Id.
at ¶ 10. The court additionally rejected the defendant's claim that using a juvenile adjudication as an element of an adult criminal offense "is more consequential" than using it as a sentence enhancement. The court observed that " 'only the existence of a disability * * * is at issue in the statute.' "
Id.
, quoting
State v. Barfield
,
{¶ 11} Moreover, the court explained that the WUD statute reflects a legislative policy decision "that allowing weapons in the hands of individuals with certain prior juvenile adjudication poses an increased risk to public safety, as does allowing weapons in the hands of those with other disabling conditions such as chronic alcoholism or drug dependence." Id. at ¶ 16.
{¶ 12} In the case sub judice, we likewise find Hand distinguishable. Nothing in the text of R.C. 2950.05(F)(1) indicates that courts must treat a juvenile adjudication as an adult conviction. The failure-to-notify provision states:
No person who is required to notify a sheriff of a change of address pursuant to division (A) of this section or a change in vehicle information or identifiers pursuant to division (D) of this section shall fail to notify the appropriate sheriff in accordance with that division.
R.C. 2950.05(F)(1). None of the language in this statute suggests that a juvenile adjudication constitutes an adult conviction. In fact, the provision does not mention the word "juvenile" or "adjudication." Although we recognize that a juvenile adjudication gives rise to the duty to notify, see R.C. 2950.05(B), the duty-to-notify provision does not equate a juvenile adjudication to an adult conviction and it does not enhance the failure-to-notify penalty due to a prior juvenile adjudication.
{¶ 13} Moreover, R.C. Chapter 2950, including the failure-to-notify provision, reflects a legislative policy decision that individuals labeled as juvenile sex offenders pose an increased risk to public safety and that requiring these individuals to comply with the registration and notification provisions attempts to minimize that risk. R.C. 2950.02 ;
see
State v. Blankenship
,
{¶ 14} We also note that the Ohio Supreme Court has upheld the constitutionality of imposing the duty-to-notify requirement upon juvenile sex offenders, even though the duty extends into adulthood:
The imposition of juvenile-offender-registrant status under R.C. 2152.82 or 2152.83(B) with corresponding registration and notification requirements that continue beyond the offender's reaching age 18 or 21 does not violate the offender's due-process rights.
In re D.S.
,
{¶ 15} We additionally note that our decision accords with the First District in
State v. Buttery
, 1st Dist. Hamilton No. C-160609,
In this case, R.C. 2950.04 distinguishes between an adult offender convicted of a sexually-oriented offense and a juvenile adjudicated delinquent and classified for having committed a sexually-oriented offense. While both are required to register under the statute, the registration requirements are based on either an adult conviction or a juvenile adjudication. The statute does not treat a juvenile adjudication as a conviction; the juvenile is required to register based upon the juvenile adjudication and classification. The registration requirement does not depend on an adult conviction. Like the juvenile adjudication constituting the disability element in the weapons-under-disability cases, the juvenile adjudication for a sexually-oriented offense requires registration in its own right. The juvenile adjudication is not a penalty-enhancing element; it is an element of the crime of failing to register.
Id. at ¶ 20. The court thus determined that using the defendant's juvenile adjudication as the predicate for his failure-to-register offense did not violate his due process rights.
{¶ 16} We observe that the Ohio Supreme Court initially had stayed
Buttery
pending its
Carnes
decision.
{¶ 17} Accordingly, based upon the foregoing reasons, we overrule appellant's sole assignment of error and affirm the trial court's judgment.
JUDGMENT AFFIRMED.
Hoover, P.J.: Concurs in Judgment & Opinion
Harsha, J.: Concurs in Judgment Only with Opinion
Harsha, J., concurring in judgment only:
Young concedes that he did not raise his objection below to the constitutionality of the charged crime. He thus claims plain error. But he phrases it under the "manifest injustice" standard typically associated with a postsentence motion to withdraw a guilty plea. He cites
State v. Tinney
, 5th Dist. Richland No. 13CA18,
Indeed, Young appears to consciously disregard the fact that this matter is before the court on his appeal from his guilty plea to a charge of failure to notify. Generally, a guilty plea forfeits all appealable errors that may have occurred in the trial court, unless the errors precluded the defendant from knowingly, intelligently, and voluntarily entering a guilty plea.
State v. Mitchem
, 4th Dist. Jackson No. 17CA10,
But this does not necessarily mean that he forfeited plain-error on appeal by pleading guilty; a guilty plea does not forfeit a claim that on its face, the charge is one that the state cannot legally prosecute.
Mitchem
at ¶ 24, citing
State v. Legg
,
We have discretion to consider a forfeited constitutional claim for plain error to determine whether "but for a plain or obvious error, the outcome of the proceeding would have been otherwise, and reversal must be necessary to correct a manifest miscarriage of justice."
State v. Quarterman
,
The state charged appellant with violating "R.C.2950.05(E)(1)," and the trial court convicted him under that same statute. However, under the version of R.C. 2950.05 in effect on the date of appellant's indictment, the offense of failure to notify is listed in R.C. 2950.05(F)(1), not (E)(1). Am. Sub. S.B. 10, 2007 Ohio Laws File 10. R.C. 2950.05(F)(1) states: "No person who is required to notify a sheriff of a change of address pursuant to division (A) of this section or a change in vehicle information or identifiers pursuant to division (D) of this section shall fail to notify the appropriate sheriff in accordance with that division." The trial court may correct this clerical error.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- STATE of Ohio, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Christopher YOUNG, Defendant-Appellant.
- Cited By
- 6 cases
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Trial court did not plainly err by accepting appellant's guilty plea to failure-to-notify under R.C. 2950.05(F)(1) using prior juvenile adjudication as basis for duty to notify did not obviously violate due process.