State v. Harper

160 Ohio St.3d 480

159 N.E.3d 248

The STATE of Ohio, Appellant,

v.HARPER, Appellee.

No. 2018-1144

Supreme Court of Ohio.

Submitted November 13, 2019

Decided May 14, 2020

Ron O'Brien, Franklin County Prosecuting Attorney, and Seth L. Gilbert, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellant.

Yeura R. Venters, Franklin County Public Defender, and George M. Schumann, Assistant Public Defender, for appellee.

Dave Yost, Attorney General, Benjamin M. Flowers, State Solicitor, Michael J. Hendershot, Chief Deputy Solicitor, and Zachery P. Keller and Samuel C. Peterson, Deputy Solicitors, urging reversal for amicus curiae Attorney General Dave Yost.

Julia R. Bates, Lucas County Prosecuting Attorney, and Evy M. Jarrett, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, urging reversal for amicus curiae Lucas County Prosecutor Julia R. Bates.

Kennedy, J. {¶ 1} In State v. Grimes , we held that a trial court does not properly impose postrelease control if the sentencing entry does not notify the offender that any violation of the conditions of postrelease control will subject the offender to the consequences for a violation provided in R.C. 2967.28. 151 Ohio St.3d 19, 2017-Ohio-2927, 85 N.E.3d 700, ¶ 1. This discretionary appeal from the Tenth District Court of Appeals asks us to clarify whether our decision in Grimes applies retroactively and whether the failure to provide notice of the consequences of a violation of postrelease control in the sentencing entry renders the imposition of postrelease control void ab initio and subject to collateral attack at any time. Our resolution of the second issue makes it unnecessary to address the first issue.

{¶ 2} Our jurisprudence on void sentences arose out of the recognition that the General Assembly alone has the power to define offenses and prescribe punishment and that a court therefore lacks authority to substitute a different sentence for one provided by statute. In cases in which the trial court inadvertently failed to properly impose postrelease control in the sentence, we provided a remedy by holding that the failure rendered the sentence—or part of the sentence—void and subject to correction at any time before the expiration of the original sentence. See generally State v. Fischer , 128 Ohio St.3d 92, 2010-Ohio-6238, 942 N.E.2d 332.

{¶ 3} In attempting to apply this remedy, we have had to add additional exceptions to the traditional rule that errors in sentencing are not jurisdictional and that those errors render the resulting sentence voidable, not void. Our attempt to bring clarity to the law, however, has burdened Ohio courts with unnecessary litigation challenging errors in the imposition of postrelease control that could have been raised by the parties at sentencing or on direct appeal, undermining the finality of criminal judgments.

{¶ 4} Today, we realign our precedent in cases involving the imposition of postrelease control with the traditional understanding of what constitutes a void judgment. When a case is within a court's subject-matter jurisdiction and the accused is properly before the court, any error in the exercise of that jurisdiction in imposing postrelease control renders the court's judgment voidable, permitting the sentence to be set aside if the error has been successfully challenged on direct appeal.

{¶ 5} In this case, the common pleas court had subject-matter jurisdiction over the case and personal jurisdiction over the accused. Because the court had the constitutional and statutory power to enter a finding of guilt and impose a sentence, any error in the exercise of its jurisdiction in failing to properly impose postrelease control rendered the judgment of conviction voidable, not void, and it is not subject to collateral attack. Therefore, to the extent any prior case conflicts with our holding today, it is overruled.

{¶ 6} Accordingly, we reject the notion that the failure to incorporate a notice of the consequences of a violation of postrelease control in the sentencing entry as required by Grimes renders the sentence void to the extent that it does not properly impose postrelease control. We therefore reverse the appellate court's judgment remanding this case to the trial court for further proceedings to correct the entry imposing postrelease control.

Facts and Procedural History

{¶ 7} In April 2012, the Franklin County grand jury indicted appellee, Andre Dejuan Harper, on two counts of robbery, one charged as a second-degree felony and the other charged as a third-degree felony. In February 2013, he pleaded guilty to robbery as a third-degree felony and the state agreed to dismiss the second-degree-felony count of robbery. At the plea hearing, the trial court advised Harper in writing that he would be subject to postrelease control and notified him of the consequences of violating it.

{¶ 8} The trial court then sentenced Harper to three years in prison and imposed a mandatory three-year term of postrelease control. Neither party disputes that the trial court gave the oral notices required by R.C. 2929.19(B) in imposing postrelease control, and the trial court informed Harper of the consequences of violating postrelease control—i.e., that the Adult Parole Authority ("APA") may impose a prison term of up to one-half of the stated prison term—in a separate document. However, the court did not include the consequences of a violation of postrelease control in the sentencing entry itself. Harper did not file a notice of appeal to challenge his sentence, and he was released from prison on September 11, 2015, and placed on postrelease control.

{¶ 9} In July 2017, after Harper was charged with violating the conditions of his postrelease-control sanction, he moved to vacate that portion of his sentence, alleging that it was void because the sentencing entry failed to state the consequences of violating postrelease control as required by this court's recent decision in Grimes , 151 Ohio St.3d 19, 2017-Ohio-2927, 85 N.E.3d 700. The trial court denied the motion, and Harper appealed.

{¶ 10} The Tenth District Court of Appeals rejected the state's arguments that our decision in Grimes did not apply retroactively to Harper's case and that Harper's motion was barred by res judicata, explaining that "a failure to properly impose post-release control renders a sentence void in relevant part and therefore open to challenge at any time, irrespective of finality or other principles of res judicata." 2018-Ohio-2529, 115 N.E.3d 840, ¶ 15. Notwithstanding this holding, however, the appellate court concluded that "although the imposition of postrelease control in the judgment entry was defective under Grimes , it stated enough information * * * to impose post-release control and permit the APA to begin administering it * * *. As a consequence, * * * Harper remains validly under sentence, even though it may not have been perfectly imposed." Id. at ¶ 18. The court of appeals affirmed the denial of Harper's motion to vacate, but it also remanded the matter to the trial court with instructions to enter a nunc pro tunc entry to include the "consequences" language required by Grimes . Id. at ¶ 19-20.

{¶ 11} We accepted the state's discretionary appeal on the following propositions of law:

(1) This Court's decision in State v. Grimes , 151 Ohio St.3d 19, 2017-Ohio-2927, 85 N.E.3d 700, does not apply retroactively to convictions that were already final when Grimes was decided.

(2) The absence of "consequences" language in a sentencing entry as required by State v. Grimes , 151 Ohio St.3d 19, 2017-Ohio-2927, 85 N.E.3d 700, does not render the sentence void.

See 153 Ohio St.3d 1503, 2018-Ohio-4285, 109 N.E.3d 1260.

Positions of the Parties

{¶ 12} The state maintains two positions. The first is that a new judicial ruling does not apply retroactively to cases that are final—i.e., when all appellate remedies have been exhausted—when the new rule is announced. It contends that our decision in Grimes is a new judicial ruling because no earlier case had required trial courts to include the consequences of a postrelease-control violation in the sentencing entry in order to properly impose postrelease control, and the court was neither construing a statute for the first time nor overruling prior caselaw. According to the state, the court of appeals deviated from these principles when it applied Grimes to Harper's already final case based on the court's view that the failure to comply with Grimes rendered the postrelease-control sanction void. The state's second position is that contrary to the holding of the Tenth District, the failure to include the consequences of a violation of postrelease control in the sentencing entry does not make the postrelease-control sanction void. The state notes that there is no statute that imposes that requirement on trial courts and that errors in the manner in which the trial court imposes postrelease control are not jurisdictional errors. And even if the omission of consequences language in this case fits within this court's jurisprudence on void sentences, the state urges that we should overrule those cases and hold that errors in imposing postrelease control do not render any part of a defendant's sentence void.

{¶ 13} Harper asserts that this appeal should be dismissed as improvidently accepted. He explains that the issues presented are moot because the court of appeals affirmed the trial court's denial of his motion to vacate his postrelease control as void and he had fully served his postrelease control before we accepted the appeal. He also maintains that the trial court's failure to include the consequences of a postrelease-control violation in the sentencing entry could be considered merely a clerical error that could have been corrected with a nunc pro tunc order "without having made any reference to the Grimes opinion whatsoever."

{¶ 14} On the merits of this case, Harper argues that the court of appeals correctly rejected the state's argument that Grimes does not apply...