State v. Ramey

In State v. Ramey, Franklin App.No. 06AP-245, 2006 Ohio 6429, a felony offender was resentenced in 2006 after being sentenced in 2001 for one count of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity and seven counts of receiving stolen property. The Ramey court first quoted State v. McColloch (1991), 78 Ohio App.3d 42, 46, 603 N.E.2d 1106, to conclude that an invalid sentence for which there is no statutory authority is a circumstance under which there can be no expectation of finality to trigger the protections of the Double Jeopardy Clause. Id. at P 16. The Ramey court went on to hold: "Here, the trial court was statutorily required to impose a period of post-release control. The original sentencing entry did not include the imposition of post-release control and therefore was void. Because jeopardy did not attach to the void sentence, the trial court did not violate defendant's constitutional guarantee against double jeopardy in later correcting the sentence." Id. at P 17. The Court addressed the question of whether a trial court retained authority to modify a sentencing entry to impose an erroneously omitted mandatory term of PRC while the offender was serving his journalized prison sentence. In that case, the trial court resentenced the offender one day before the expiration of his prison sentence, imposing a mandatory three-year period of PRC, which was absent from the offender's original sentencing entry despite the trial court's oral notification that he would be subject to PRC. On appeal, the Court affirmed the resentencing and held that, "because the trial court failed to impose post-release control in its sentencing entry the sentence was void and subject to correction via resentencing." Id. at P7 The Court rejected the offender's argument that, because the state did not appeal the sentencing error, the error was waived or barred by res judicata. The Court further rejected the offender's argument that resentencing subjected him to double jeopardy. Lastly, the Court rejected the offender's argument that resentencing him one day before the expiration of his prison term violated his substantive due process rights, stating: "Hernandez provides that a trial court retains authority to correct void sentencing orders as long as the defendant has not served out his sentence." Id. at P19.