State v. Wogenstahl

• Decision Date: 25 July 2017
• Docket Number: No. 1995–0042.,1995–0042.
• Citation: 84 N.E.3d 1008,2017 Ohio 6873,150 Ohio St.3d 571
• Parties: The STATE of Ohio, Appellee, v. WOGENSTAHL, Appellant.
• Court: Ohio Supreme Court

150 Ohio St.3d 571

84 N.E.3d 1008

2017 Ohio 6873

The STATE of Ohio, Appellee,

v.WOGENSTAHL, Appellant.

No. 1995–0042.

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted April 4, 2017.

Decided July 25, 2017.

Joseph T. Deters, Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney, and Philip R. Cummings and Sean M. Donovan, Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys, for appellee.

Timothy Young, Ohio Public Defender, and Kimberly Rigby and Elizabeth Arrick, Assistant Public Defenders, for appellant.

KENNEDY, J.

{¶ 1} Appellant, Jeffrey Wogenstahl, was convicted of the 1991 kidnapping and murder of ten-year-old Amber Garrett. Her body was discovered in a wooded area in Bright, Indiana. We reopened Wogenstahl's direct appeal of his capital-murder conviction to consider a single question: Did the trial court have jurisdiction over Wogenstahl's aggravated-murder charge? See 145 Ohio St.3d 1455, 2016-Ohio-2807, 49 N.E.3d 318 ; 145 Ohio St.3d 1467, 2016-Ohio-2956, 49 N.E.3d 1310.

{¶ 2} We now answer that question in the affirmative. Because we find that it cannot be determined whether Amber Garrett was murdered in Ohio or Indiana, we hold that Ohio had jurisdiction over the aggravated-murder charge under R.C. 2901.11(D).

{¶ 3} Wogenstahl asserts three propositions of law: (1) "An Ohio court lacks subject matter jurisdiction when the state fails to prove such jurisdiction beyond a reasonable doubt. Any resulting conviction is void and violates a defendant's constitutional rights to fair trial and due process. U.S. Const. amends. VI and XIV," (2) "A defendant is denied the effective assistance of counsel, when a trial court lacks subject matter jurisdiction and defense counsel fails to raise the issue. U.S. Const. amends. VI and XIV," and (3) "Trial of a defendant in a court without subject matter jurisdiction would necessarily violate the defendant's substantive and procedural constitutional rights to a fair trial and due process. U.S. Const. amends. VI and XIV." Because we determine, in addressing the first proposition of law, that the evidence shows that the trial court did have jurisdiction here, the second and third propositions of law are moot.

Evidence at trial

{¶ 4} Amber Garrett lived in Harrison, Ohio, with her mother, Peggy, and four siblings. On the night of November 23, 1991, Peggy Garrett asked her 16–year–old son, Eric, to babysit for Amber and two of her siblings. Peggy left home after 11:00 p.m. to meet her friend, Lynn, at a nearby bar.

{¶ 5} Sometime later that night, Peggy and Lynn drove to a second bar, the Miamitown Lounge, where they saw Wogenstahl. Peggy had known Wogenstahl for about six weeks.¹ At the Miamitown, she told him that her son Justin was gone for the weekend and that Eric was home with the other children.

{¶ 6} Peggy, Lynn, and Wogenstahl left the bar to smoke marijuana together in Wogenstahl's car, and when they went back in, the bar was closing. They went to another bar, the Flicker Inn, for a drink. Peggy estimated that they arrived around 2:20 a.m.

{¶ 7} When the Flicker Inn was closing, Wogenstahl invited the women back to his apartment to smoke more marijuana. They declined. Peggy and Lynn parted from Wogenstahl and went to a Waffle House, arriving around 3:00 or 3:15 a.m.

{¶ 8} Meanwhile, around 3:00 a.m., Wogenstahl knocked on the door of the Garretts' apartment. He told Eric that Peggy needed him at Troy Beard's apartment, which was three blocks away. It took Eric five or ten minutes to dress, after which he left the house with Wogenstahl, locking the door behind him.

{¶ 9} According to Eric, Wogenstahl drove him to within a block of Beard's apartment but would not drive any closer because he did not want Peggy to see him giving Eric a ride. He promised to pull around the block and wait for Eric. But when Eric reemerged from Beard's apartment building, after discovering that Peggy had not been there all evening, Wogenstahl was gone.

{¶ 10} After looking around a few minutes, Eric walked home. He arrived to find the door closed but unlocked. Concerned, he checked on the children, and he discovered that Amber was not there. However, he thought that maybe she had never been in the bedroom at all that night, that "maybe she spent the night with one of her friends," and that he had just assumed all night she was sleeping in the bedroom.

{¶ 11} According to Eric, it was 3:10 a.m. when he arrived at Beard's apartment. And it was "close to 3:30" when he returned to the Garretts' apartment and found that Amber was gone.

{¶ 12} Wogenstahl admitted going to the Garretts' apartment at 3:00 a.m. Initially, he told police that he was playing a prank, alleging that he and Eric "always mess with each other." At trial, he testified that he had gone to the apartment to buy marijuana from Eric. He told the jury, "Eric had asked me would I give him a ride down to where Peggy was so he could give her a quarter ounce of reefer." He claimed that after driving Eric to a spot near Beard's apartment, he went home to bed.

{¶ 13} The town of Harrison, where Amber Garrett lived, sits on the Ohio–Indiana border. State Street is the dividing line between Harrison, Ohio, and West Harrison, Indiana; the state line runs down the middle of the street. To get from Harrison to Bright, Indiana, one follows State Street south until it curves and crosses fully into Indiana, at which point it becomes Jamison Road. The distance from Harrison, Ohio, to the place where Amber's body was found is approximately four miles.

{¶ 14} At 3:15 a.m. on November 24, an employee working at a United Dairy Farmers ("UDF") store on State Street in Harrison saw a car drive past on State Street, headed toward Bright. The driver was a man. As it passed the UDF, the interior of the car was illuminated by the headlights of another vehicle, and she was able to see two people inside. She later testified:

A: * * * I seen a male silhouette and what looked like to be a young girl sitting in the seat. First I could not tell until she had moved.

Q: Did you see some movement in the car?

A: Yes.

Q: What did you see?

A: I seen what looked like they were getting up and stretching and then laying back on the car door asleep.

Q: Were both people in the front seat of the car?

A: Yes, they were.

{¶ 15} Four miles away, a resident on Jamison Road awoke in the middle of the night to use the restroom. On the way, he noted that the time on his digital clock was 3:13 a.m. Sometime after he returned to bed, he heard an automobile driving up the road. Looking out the window, he saw a car driving slowly down Jamison Road in the direction of Harrison, as if coming from Bright. When the car reached a curve in the road near his home, he saw it pull off to the side of the road, and he saw the headlights go out. On direct examination, he testified that he had heard the car "maybe five minutes or longer" after returning to bed from using the restroom, but on cross-examination, he indicated that he had fallen "partially asleep" and could not say what time it was when he heard the car.

{¶ 16} Three people testified that they had passed the stopped car on Jamison Road that night. At "right around 3:38, 3:39, 3:40," a female motorist drove down Jamison Road, traveling from her job in Harrison to her home in Bright. She saw a car on the side of the road with its headlights off and a man standing by the rear door on the driver's side of the car.

{¶ 17} At approximately 3:40 a.m., a male motorist passed a car stopped on the roadside with its headlights off and its trunk open. He saw a man at the back of the car near the open trunk.

{¶ 18} Finally, also around 3:40 a.m., a second male motorist saw the car parked on the side of the road. He was driving from Bright toward Harrison and came upon the vehicle. As he drove past, someone in the car turned the headlights on, but he did not see the car pull back onto the road.

{¶ 19} Shortly thereafter, around 3:45 or 4:00 o'clock, the UDF employee again saw the car she had seen drive past earlier in the direction of Bright. It was parked at a self-serve car wash cater-cornered from the UDF. The car then pulled into the UDF lot, and the driver came in to buy cigarettes. She testified that he had what looked like blood and dirt under his fingernails. He then left and drove up State Street in the direction away from Bright.

{¶ 20} The UDF employee, the first male motorist, and the female motorists each identified Wogenstahl as the man they had seen that night, and all three, and the second male motorist, agreed that a photograph of Wogenstahl's car matched his or her memory of the car he or she had seen that night.

{¶ 21} Peggy Garrett reported her daughter missing on the afternoon of Sunday, November 24. Police searched for Amber for three days without success. Then on Wednesday, November 27, the Jamison Road resident directed police to the spot where he had seen the car pull off along Jamison Road. Police discovered Amber's body down a steep embankment, in an area overgrown with prickly bushes and weeds, not far from the spot where witnesses had seen the car parked on Jamison Road.

{¶ 22} The cause of death was multiple stab wounds and blunt trauma to the head. The deputy coroner testified that the stab wounds alone would have been fatal and that the head trauma alone would have been fatal. Amber had 11 stab wounds to her neck, shoulder, chest, and armpit, as well as defensive wounds on her forearms. The blunt-trauma injuries were consistent with having been caused by an automobile jack handle. In the trunk of Wogenstahl's car, police found a jack with a missing handle.

{¶ 23} The state presented evidence that the murder had not occurred in the area where Amber's body had been found. The deputy coroner testified that it was reasonable to conclude that she had been carried through the thorny area after she was killed. He based this conclusion on two observations. First, the multiple thorn scratches on her body "appear[ed] to be postmortem injuries." Second, her bare feet were clean and unscratched, suggesting...