State v. Long

In State v. Long (May 13, 1993), Montgomery App. No. 13285, 1993 Ohio App, the Court noted that the trial judge had made it known to defense counsel, after the plea, but before the imposition of sentence, what sentence she intended to impose, and that sentence was more severe than the defendant had thought had been agreed upon as part of the plea bargain. Our opinion is not a model of clarity with regard to what standard we were applying, the pre-sentence standard or the post-sentence standard. The Court state: "But in any event this is a motion to vacate before sentence was imposed so the court must review the facts of this case under the guidance that such a motion should be freely allowed." But then the Court state: "We agree that the trial court correctly observed that appellant's motion should be considered as made after sentence because it was only after counsel learned of the court's sentence that he sought to vacate his client's guilty plea. To correct a 'manifest injustice' the court may set aside the judgment of conviction and permit the defendant to withdraw his plea. Crim. R. 32.1." In any event, the rationale in State v. Long, supra, that would permit the application of the less liberal post-sentence standard of discretion for considering the defendant's motion to withdraw his plea is that the defendant in that case had been unpleasantly surprised, after his plea had been accepted, to discover that the trial court was going to be imposing a more onerous sentence than he had supposed. That would invoke the rationale for the stricter, post-sentence standard, which the Court explained in State v. Long, as follows: "But if a plea of guilty could be retracted with ease after sentence, the accused might be encouraged to plead guilty to test the weight of the potential punishment and withdraw the plea if the sentence were unexpectedly severe."