State v. Bezak

In State v. Bezak, 114 Ohio St.3d 94, 97, 2007 Ohio 3250, 868 N.E.2d 961, the Ohio Supreme Court held that "when a trial court fails to notify an offender that he may be subject to postrelease control at a sentencing hearing the sentence is void; the sentence must be vacated and the matter remanded to the trial court for resentencing." The Supreme Court explained that at such a resentencing hearing, "the trial court may not merely inform the offender of the imposition of postrelease control and automatically reimpose the original sentence. Rather, the effect of vacating the trial court's original sentence is to place the parties in the same place as if there had been no sentence." Id. at P13. Accordingly, "the trial court must resentence the offender as if there had been no original sentence." Id. at P16. This is true even if postrelease control was properly included in the sentencing entry. The Supreme Court explained, "'when a trial court fails to notify an offender about postrelease control at the sentencing hearing but incorporates that notice into its journal entry imposing sentence, it fails to comply with the mandatory provisions of R.C. 2929.19(B)(3)(c) and (d), and, therefore, the sentence must be vacated and the matter remanded to the trial court for resentencing.'" Bezak at P11.