Ohio Criminal Appeals Lawyer Blog

Ohio's Second District Court of Appeals reversed the aggravated murder and aggravated robbery convictions of Aaron Whitfield when it found that his statement to police should have been suppressed because he was in custody for Miranda purposes but not given his Miranda Rights. At the suppression hearing, only Whitfield and the detective that conducted the interview testified. But since the detective met Whitfield in the interview room at the police department, only Whitfield testified about how he got there.

Whitfield testified that four armed officers met him at his home and told him they needed to talk to him about the 2004 slaying of Nasru Fashions owner Mamadou Njie.  The officers handcuffed Whitfield behind his back and took him in the back of a cruiser to the interview room where he met the interviewing detective.  The handcuffs were removed at the interview room and he was not told he was under arrest.  When Whitfield asked the detective if he was being charged, the detective said "no."

The Second District Court of Appeals found that Whitfield was "in custody" for purposes of Miranda and should have been given his Miranda Rights.  The detective testified about the interview and a videotape of a portion of the interview had been played for the jury.  The Second District reversed Whitfield's convictions based on the Miranda violation and remanded the case for a new trial.

State v. Whitfield, 2009-Ohio-293 (The Miranda issue is at paragraphs 53-118)

On remand, the defendant reached a deal where he pleaded to lesser charges and was sentenced to 16 years (which is a whole lot better than the 23L he was sentenced to before I won his appeal).  Read a news story by clicking here.

R.C. 2951.041(A)(1) gives "offenders" the possibility of intervention in lieu of conviction, but it also gives full authority to the trial judge to deny that possibility from any and all offenders. This was the issue in State v. Rice, 2009-Ohio-162.

Rice appeared to be a good candidate for ILC, but the trial judge denied Rice's request without a hearing. And when a request for ILC is denied without a hearing, according to State v. Rice, nothing can be done about it.  In a 2-1 decision, Ohio's Second District Court of Appeals found that there was no plain error even if the trial judge abused her discretion in denying ILC without a hearing.

At paragraph 18, the majority explained:

"It is unfortunate that the General Assembly crafted R.C. 2941.041 as it did.  That section creates a substantive right of relief, but permits the court to deny the right by overruling the defendant's procedural request for a hearing.  If that allows courts disposed against the state's policy favoring [ILC] to undermine that policy by arbitrarily denying the hearing, then the General Assembly should remove that impediment against its policy from R.C. 2941.041."