State v. Hope
| Decision Date | 26 May 2022 |
| Docket Number | s. 110611,110612,110613 |
| Citation | 191 N.E.3d 1169 |
| Parties | STATE of Ohio, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Marshall HOPE, Defendant-Appellant. |
| Court | Ohio Court of Appeals |
Michael C. O'Malley, Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney, and Eric Collins, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee.
Timothy Young, Ohio Public Defender, and Timothy B. Hackett, Assistant State Public Defender, for appellant.
JOURNAL ENTRY AND OPINION
SEAN C. GALLAGHER, A.J.:
{¶ 1} Marshall Hope appeals his convictions in three separate cases, involving felony assault, robbery, and various weapons violations. In this appeal, Hope claims that the juvenile court failed to render a valid probable-cause determination before transferring the case to the general division of the common pleas court ("general division") under R.C. 2152.12(A)(2), and in the alternative, Hope argues that his sentences that include non-life indefinite sentences under R.C. 2929.144 and 2929.14(A)(1)(a) and (A)(2)(a) are unconstitutional. For the following reasons, we affirm.
{¶ 2} Before the commencement of the underlying actions, Hope was bound over from juvenile court and convicted of various felony offenses in the general division, the facts of which are not relevant to our review. Cuyahoga C.P. Nos. CR-19-644391, CR-19-644392, and CR-19-643005 ("2019 cases"). Following those earlier convictions, three new cases were filed against Hope, with the proceedings being initiated in juvenile court. According to the state, in three separate incidents Hope stole a phone from a Regional Transit Authority passenger, punching the victim in the face before fleeing; assaulted his ex-girlfriend and threatened her with a firearm; and brandished a firearm after a victim declined to provide Hope a cigarette in the parking lot of a fast-food establishment. Hope was apprehended by police officers who pursued him after the third incident.
{¶ 3} At an initial hearing before the magistrate on two of the three cases, Hope expressed his understanding that he was not supposed to be in juvenile court because of his prior felony convictions, repeatedly interrupting the proceedings to ask about being returned to "the county." At a subsequent hearing before the juvenile court, the third case had just been initiated and Hope was being arraigned on that case along with continuing the proceedings on the two earlier cases. The prosecutor introduced the certified entries of the convictions for the 2019 cases in support of the motion to transfer the cases. Hope conceded that he was "the individual who was found guilty [in the 2019 cases] in the court of common pleas" and that he "receive[d] a sentence to * * * Lorain Correctional Institute [sic]" as a result. Hope then expressly consented to the state's motion to transfer the three cases.
{¶ 4} The juvenile court "noted that based on [Hope's] guilty finding on the cases that were transferred from this Court pursuant to 2151.12 and then he was subsequently, again, found guilty of those offenses, he is no longer a child under the definition of the statute and therefore not subject to the Juvenile Court jurisdiction." This conclusion is in line with R.C. 2152.02(C)(5), which provides that any minor previously convicted of a felony offense in criminal court is not considered a "child" for the purposes of the juvenile court's jurisdiction established in R.C. 2151.23(A). Recognition of the jurisdictional limitation terminated the juvenile court's proceedings.
{¶ 5} Instead of memorializing the lack of jurisdiction as the basis for the transfer, the juvenile court issued a journal entry in each of Hope's three cases, transferring them to the general division and erroneously stating that Hope "stipulates to a finding of probable cause to all counts in this matter." Each journal entry also states that "[u]pon the conclusion of all evidence presented * * * the Court finds probable cause to believe that [Hope] committed" the acts alleged in the juvenile complaints. The juvenile court thus purported to exercise judicial authority it already claimed to lack, but that was an error in drafting, not substance. The hearing transcript reflected the trial court's decision to transfer the case for the want of jurisdiction and that it never considered a probable-cause determination or asked for any stipulations to that effect.
{¶ 6} This was purely an error in journalizing what had occurred. As Hope recognized after the fact, at his change-of-plea hearing in the general division after the cases were transferred and upon the trial court inquiring as to the transfer, Thus, the parties and the trial court in the general division acknowledged that the cases were transferred to the general division for disposition as required under R.C. 2152.12(A)(2), rendering any error in the juvenile court's journal entries, at best, harmless.
{¶ 7} In Cuyahoga C.P. No. CR-20-653065, Hope pleaded guilty to having weapons while under disability, a third-degree felony, in violation of R.C. 2923.13(A)(2), and assault, a first-degree misdemeanor, in violation of R.C. 2903.13(A). Hope was sentenced to three years in prison for the weapons violation and 180 days for the assault, to be served concurrently. In Cuyahoga C.P. No. CR-20-6532893, Hope pleaded guilty to robbery, a second-degree felony, in violation of R.C. 2911.02(A)(2). The court sentenced Hope to an indefinite prison term of seven to ten and a half years, in accordance with R.C. 2929.144 and 2929.14(A)(2)(a). And in Cuyahoga C.P. No. CR-20-652895, Hope pleaded guilty to attempted robbery, a fourth-degree felony, in violation of R.C. 2923.02 and 2911.02(A)(3), with a one-year firearm specification in violation of R.C. 2941.141, and having weapons while under disability, a third-degree felony, in violation of R.C. 2903.12(A)(2). He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for the attempted robbery, one year for the firearm specification, and three years for the weapons violation. The sentences for the attempted robbery and weapons charge were imposed concurrently to each other, but consecutive to the firearm specification, leaving a four-year aggregate term of imprisonment for that case. In addition, the trial court ordered that the terms of imprisonment as between the three cases be served consecutively.
{¶ 8} It is from these convictions that Hope appeals and advances four assignments of error: (1) the trial court erred by failing to conduct a valid probable-cause hearing and transferring the case to the general division regardless of the fact that R.C. 2152.12(A)(2) does not contain such a requirement; (2) that a mandatory transfer from juvenile court to the criminal court without an amenability hearing violated Hope's constitutional rights, claiming that State v. Aalim , 150 Ohio St.3d 489, 2017-Ohio-2956, 83 N.E.3d 883, ¶ 38 (" Aalim II "), was wrongly decided; (3) that Hope was deprived of effective assistance of counsel because his counsel failed to request a probable-cause hearing; and (4) that the non-life indefinite sentence imposed in one of the cases was unconstitutional.
{¶ 9} Hope's argument with respect to the validity of the mandatory transfer without an amenability hearing, as advanced in the second assignment of error, is based on State v. Aalim , 150 Ohio St.3d 463, 2016-Ohio-8278, 83 N.E.3d 862, which was vacated and supplanted by Aalim II . We have no authority to overrule Aalim II, in which the Ohio Supreme Court declared that mandatory transfers of juvenile cases to a criminal court are not unconstitutional based on the lack of an amenability hearing. Id. at ¶ 38. As Hope acknowledges, the Ohio Supreme Court has accepted State v. Bunch , 7th Dist. Mahoning No. 18 MA 0022, 2021-Ohio-1244, 2021 WL 1343696, ¶ 27-32, for review, including a proposition of law seeking to once again revisit the issues presented in the Aalim cases regarding whether amenability hearings are required before any case is transferred from the juvenile court to a criminal court. State v. Bunch , 163 Ohio St.3d 1501, 2021-Ohio-2307, 170 N.E.3d 889. Unless or until the Ohio Supreme Court addresses Aalim II , we are duty bound to follow it. With no other arguments presented for our review, we must overrule the second assignment of error. App.R. 16(A)(7).
{¶ 10} Hope's argument on the indefinite-sentencing issue, as advanced in the fourth assignment of error, singularly rests on the analysis provided in the panel decision in State v. Sealey , 2021-Ohio-1949, 173 N.E.3d 894 (8th Dist.), which affirmed a trial court's conclusion that the Reagan Tokes Law was unconstitutional. Id. at ¶ 45. Sealey was overruled and vacated through this court's en banc process. State v. Sealey , 8th Dist. Cuyahoga No. 109670, 2022-Ohio-1166, 2022 WL 1043005. In State v. Delvallie , 8th Dist., 2022-Ohio-470, 185 N.E.3d 536, the general constitutional challenges advanced against the validity of the Reagan Tokes Law and the non-life indefinite sentencing structure therein have been overruled. See also State v. Daniel , 8th Dist. Cuyahoga No. 109583, 2022-Ohio-1165, 2022 WL 1043987, ¶ 5. The fourth assignment of error is, therefore, without merit.
{¶ 11} Turning to the more substantive arguments, in the first and third assignments of error, Hope claims that a probable-cause determination was required under R.C. 2152.12(A)(2) to effectuate the mandatory transfer to the general division. That subdivision provides in pertinent part:
The juvenile court also shall transfer a case in the circumstances described in division (C)(5) of section 2152.02 of the Revised Code or if * * * [a] complaint is filed against a child who is eligible for a discretionary transfer under section 2152.10 of the Revised Code and who previously was convicted of or pleaded guilty to a felony in a case that was transferred to a criminal court.
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