Bundy v. State

• Decision Date: 04 June 2015
• Docket Number: No. 2014–0189.,2014–0189.
• Citation: 36 N.E.3d 158,143 Ohio St.3d 237,2015 Ohio 2138
• Parties: BUNDY, Appellee, v. The STATE of Ohio, Appellant.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

143 Ohio St.3d 237
36 N.E.3d 158
2015 Ohio 2138

BUNDY, Appellee,
v.
The STATE of Ohio, Appellant.

No. 2014–0189.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted Feb. 4, 2015.
Decided June 4, 2015.

Christopher W. Thompson and Anthony Comunale, Dayton, for appellee.

Michael DeWine, Attorney General, Eric E. Murphy, State Solicitor, Stephen P. Carney and Samuel C. Peterson, Deputy Solicitors, and Debra Gorrell Wehrle, Senior Assistant Attorney General, for appellant.

O'CONNOR, C.J.

143 Ohio St.3d 237

{¶ 1} This case arises from a civil action by appellee, David Bundy, seeking a declaratory judgment that he was a "wrongfully imprisoned individual" within the meaning of R.C. 2743.48. Bundy claims eligibility, as a wrongfully imprisoned individual, to seek compensation from appellant, the state of Ohio, for the prison time he served before the reversal of his conviction for failure to register as a sex offender pursuant to our decision in State v. Bodyke, 126 Ohio St.3d 266, 2010-Ohio-2424, 933 N.E.2d 753. The issue presented in this appeal is whether the invalidation of a statute on constitutional grounds requires the conclusion that

143 Ohio St.3d 238

any criminal offenses predicated upon that statute were never committed, thereby satisfying the actual-innocence standard of R.C. 2743.48(A)(5). We hold that it does not, and we therefore reverse the judgment of the court of appeals.

RELEVANT BACKGROUND

{¶ 2} The parties agree on the following facts.

{¶ 3} Bundy was classified as a sexually oriented offender under Megan's Law, Am.Sub.H.B. No. 180, 146 Ohio Laws, Part II, 2560, 2601. Pursuant to the versions of R.C. 2950.04 and 2950.06 in effect at that time, Bundy was required to register with the sheriff in any county where he came to temporarily or permanently reside, and he was required to verify his address in October of every year. See State v. Cook, 83 Ohio St.3d 404, 408, 700 N.E.2d 570 (1998) (upholding retroactive application of registration and address-verification statutes).

{¶ 4} In November 2003, Bundy pleaded guilty to a fifth-degree felony violation of R.C. 2950.04 for failing to register with the county sheriff and was sentenced to five years of community control.

{¶ 5} In 2007, the General Assembly repealed Megan's Law, effective January 1, 2008, and replaced it with new standards for sex-offender classification and registration pursuant to the federal Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act, Section 16901 et seq., Title 42, U.S.Code. 2007 Am.Sub.S.B. No. 10. See also Bodyke, 126 Ohio St.3d 266, 2010-Ohio-2424, 933 N.E.2d 753 at ¶ 18–20. This new classification scheme, known as Ohio's Adam Walsh Act ("AWA"), was codified at R.C. Chapter 2950. The new standards applied retroactively, and the attorney general's office was charged with reclassifying all previously convicted sex offenders in conformity with the tiered system of the AWA. R.C. 2950.031 ; R.C. 2950.032. See also Bodyke at ¶ 22. Accordingly, the attorney general notified Bundy at the end of 2007 that he

36 N.E.3d 160

had been reclassified as a Tier II sex offender. As a consequence of this new classification, Bundy's obligation under R.C. 2950.06 to periodically verify his address increased from a frequency of once every year to once every 180 days. Bundy's next verification date was set for March 14, 2008.

{¶ 6} Bundy failed to verify his address with the county sheriff in March 2008, and he was charged with a third-degree felony violation of R.C. 2950.06. In a bench trial in October 2008, Bundy was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison. The trial court ordered Bundy's sentence to be served concurrently with a one-year prison sentence from a separate case that is not at issue in the current appeal.

{¶ 7} The Second District Court of Appeals affirmed Bundy's address-verification conviction on appeal, holding that the reclassification provisions and new registration requirements were constitutionally sound.

143 Ohio St.3d 239

State v. Bundy, 2d Dist. Montgomery Nos. 23063 and 23064, 2009-Ohio-5395, 2009 WL 3246844. We accepted Bundy's discretionary appeal and held the cause pending our decision in Bodyke . State v. Bundy, 124 Ohio St.3d 1473, 2010-Ohio-354, 921 N.E.2d 245.

{¶ 8} In Bodyke, we held that the sex-offender reclassification process of the AWA, codified in R.C. 2950.031 and 2950.032, violated the separation-of-powers doctrine. Id. at paragraphs two and three of the syllabus. As a result of the constitutional infirmity of Bundy's reclassification under the AWA, we reversed Bundy's conviction. In re Sexual–Offender Reclassification Cases, 126 Ohio St.3d 322, 2010-Ohio-3753, 933 N.E.2d 801, ¶ 55. On remand to the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas, the state dismissed the address-verification charge without prejudice. Bundy was released from prison in September 2010.

{¶ 9} In June 2011, Bundy filed a complaint in the court of common pleas seeking a declaration pursuant to R.C. 2743.48 that he had been wrongfully imprisoned for his failure to comply with the requirements of the AWA and that he was eligible to proceed for monetary relief against the state in the Court of Claims. Bundy moved for summary judgment, arguing that Bodyke rendered the AWA reclassification process void ab initio, requiring the conclusion that Bundy had not violated any criminal law. The state opposed Bundy's motion and filed a cross-motion for summary judgment, arguing that the mere repeal or invalidation of a statute does not require a finding that defendants whose convictions were predicated upon the statute were factually innocent.

{¶ 10} The trial court determined that Bundy had not been wrongfully imprisoned while he was serving his concurrent one-year sentence from a separate case. But with respect to the portion of Bundy's incarceration that was solely attributable to his AWA address-verification violation, the trial court found Bundy's argument to be meritorious on the authority of three recent decisions from the Eighth District Court of Appeals: Ballard v. State, 8th Dist. Cuyahoga No. 97882, 2012-Ohio-3086, 2012 WL 2582331 ; Johnson v. State, 8th Dist. Cuyahoga No. 98050, 2012-Ohio-3964, 2012 WL 3775972 ; and Mohammad v. State, 8th Dist. Cuyahoga No. 98655, 2012-Ohio-5517, 2012 WL 5988828. In these cases, the Eighth District held that the invalidation of certain provisions of the AWA on constitutional grounds caused any guilty pleas to violations of those provisions to become legal nullities, and the pleas therefore did "not exist for purposes of determining whether a person has the right to seek compensation under R.C. 2743.48." Mohammad at ¶ 18, citing Ballard and Johnson.

36 N.E.3d 161

{¶ 11} The trial court noted that Bundy's conviction was in conformity with then-existing law, but pursuant to Ballard, Johnson , and Mohammad, the court determined that the invalidation of the law required the conclusion that no violation had been committed. The trial court therefore declared Bundy to be a wrongfully imprisoned individual. The state appealed.

143 Ohio St.3d 240

{¶ 12} While the state's appeal was pending before the Second District Court of Appeals, this court summarily reversed Ballard, Johnson, and Mohammad based on our decision in Dunbar v. State, 136 Ohio St.3d 181, 2013-Ohio-2163, 992 N.E.2d 1111. Ballard v. State, 136 Ohio St.3d 83, 2013-Ohio-2412, 990 N.E.2d 590 ; Johnson v. State, 136 Ohio St.3d 84, 2013-Ohio-2413, 990 N.E.2d 590 ; Mohammad v. State, 136 Ohio St.3d 326, 2013-Ohio-3669, 995 N.E.2d 228. In Dunbar, we held that vacating a guilty plea does not erase the plea as though it never existed, id. at ¶ 15, and "a person who has pled guilty to an offense is not eligible to be declared a wrongfully imprisoned individual," id. at ¶ 19.

{¶ 13} The Second District Court of Appeals reviewed the state's appeal in light of Dunbar, but found Dunbar 's holding to be inapplicable because Bundy's case did not involve a guilty plea. The court of appeals adhered to the reasoning in the trial court and in the Eighth District decisions and held that Bundy could not have committed the AWA address-verification offense, because the offense itself was a nullity pursuant to Bodyke. The court of appeals therefore agreed that for his time in prison that was solely attributable to his AWA address-verification conviction, Bundy qualified as a wrongfully imprisoned individual.

{¶ 14} The state sought this court's discretionary review, and we accepted the following proposition of law:

A wrongful-imprisonment claim may succeed only if the claimant shows, under the actual-innocence requirement, that he did not commit the acts for which he was convicted. That requirement is not met if a claimant's conviction was set aside solely because a predicate criminal statute was invalidated as unconstitutional.

Bundy v. State, 138 Ohio St.3d 1492, 2014-Ohio-2021, 8 N.E.3d 963.

ANALYSIS

{¶ 15} Actions against the state for wrongful imprisonment are governed by R.C. 2743.48,...