Case Title: State ex rel. Snead v. Ferenc

Citation: 2014-Ohio-43

Docket Number: 2013-1084

State: ohio

Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Date: 2014-01-14T00:00:00Z

Document:
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as 
State ex rel. Snead v. Ferenc, Slip Opinion No. 2014-Ohio-43.] 
 
 
NOTICE 
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in 
an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports.  Readers are requested 
to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 
65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or 
other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be 
made before the opinion is published. 
 
SLIP OPINION NO. 2014-OHIO-43 
THE STATE EX REL. SNEAD, APPELLANT, v. FERENC, JUDGE, APPELLEE. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 
may be cited as State ex rel. Snead v. Ferenc, Slip Opinion No. 2014-Ohio-43.] 
Criminal Procedure—Crim.R. 32—Judgment entry of conviction—Nunc pro tunc 
correction—Writs of mandamus and prohibition denied. 
(No. 2013-1084—Submitted October 8, 2013—Decided January 14, 2014.) 
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Clermont County, No. CA2013-04-031. 
____________________ 
 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Appellant, Robert A. Snead, appeals from the judgment of the 
Twelfth District Court of Appeals dismissing his petition for writs of mandamus 
and prohibition to compel appellee, Clermont County Court of Common Pleas 
Judge Richard P. Ferenc, to correct a Crim.R. 32(C) error in Snead’s 2002 
judgment entry of sentence and to prevent appellee from correcting that error 
through a nunc pro tunc entry.  The appellate court properly dismissed his petition 
because the trial court’s correction of the error by way of a nunc pro tunc entry 
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made the mandamus aspect of the petition moot and because Snead had an 
adequate remedy through an appeal. 
{¶ 2} Snead pled guilty in 2002 in Clermont County Common Pleas 
Court to a number of felonies, including kidnapping with a sexual-motivation 
specification, felonious assault on a police officer, and aggravated burglary.  On 
February 27, 2002, the common pleas court issued a judgment entry in State v. 
Snead, Clermont C.P. No. 2001-CR-00010, reflecting Snead’s guilty plea and 
ordering a presentence investigation. 
{¶ 3} On March 11, 2002, the court entered a judgment entry of 
sentence.  That entry set out the charges upon which Snead was found guilty and 
the 21-year sentence of imprisonment imposed.  The common pleas court judge 
signed the entry, and it was file-stamped by the clerk of courts. 
{¶ 4} Eleven years later, on April 10, 2013, Snead filed a petition for 
writs of mandamus and prohibition in the Twelfth District Court of Appeals.  
Snead argued that the March 11, 2002 judgment entry was defective—and hence 
not a final, appealable order—because it did not contain all the elements required 
under Crim.R. 32(C).  Specifically, the March 11, 2002 entry did not indicate the 
manner of his conviction.  Snead argued that in order to find all the required 
elements of a final, appealable order, one had to review two documents, the 
March 11, 2002 judgment entry and the earlier February 27, 2002 judgment entry, 
in violation of State v. Baker, 119 Ohio St.3d 197, 2008-Ohio-3330, 893 N.E.2d 
163. 
{¶ 5} On April 18, 2013, the trial court issued a nunc pro tunc judgment 
entry of sentence.  The nunc pro tunc entry stated the fact of conviction, listed the 
offenses of which Snead was convicted, repeated the sentence, and this time 
indicated the manner of conviction—Snead’s guilty plea. 
{¶ 6} Snead then was granted leave to file an amended petition and 
argued in the court of appeals that the nunc pro tunc entry did not cure the 
January Term, 2014 
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defective March 11, 2002 judgment entry for two principal reasons.  First, Snead 
asserted that a court cannot use a nunc pro tunc entry to correct a judgment that is 
void under Crim.R. 32(C) and Baker.  And second, Snead contended that neither 
the March 11, 2002 judgment entry nor the nunc pro tunc entry disposed of the 
three felony charges that had been brought against him in case No. 2001-CR-
00091, which he asserted had been merged with case No. 2001-CR-00010. 
{¶ 7} On June 7, 2013, the Twelfth District Court of Appeals dismissed 
the petition on the grounds that the nunc pro tunc entry rendered the mandamus 
claim moot and that relief in prohibition was unavailable because Snead had an 
adequate remedy by way of appeal to dispute the propriety of the nunc pro tunc 
entry. 
{¶ 8} We find that Snead’s challenge to the validity of the March 11, 
2002 judgment entry has no merit.  A final, appealable order in a criminal case 
under Crim.R. 32(C) must contain four elements: (1) the fact of the conviction, 
(2) the sentence, (3) the judge’s signature, and (4) a time stamp from the clerk of 
courts.  State v. Lester, 130 Ohio St.3d 303, 2011-Ohio-5204, 958 N.E.2d 142, 
paragraph one of the syllabus.  The March 11, 2002 judgment entry contains all 
four of those required elements. 
{¶ 9} Lester held that the manner of conviction is a requirement of 
Crim.R. 32(C), but that its absence from the entry does not affect the finality of 
the order.  Id. at ¶ 12.  Moreover, Lester held that the omission of the manner of 
conviction is a clerical error, which the trial court may correct through a nunc pro 
tunc entry.  Id. at paragraph two of the syllabus. 
{¶ 10} This court has consistently regarded Crim.R. 32(C) errors as 
clerical mistakes subject to nunc pro tunc correction.  See State ex rel. DeWine v. 
Burge, 128 Ohio St.3d 236, 2011-Ohio-235, 943 N.E.2d 535, ¶ 17-18, and cases 
cited therein.  Snead’s argument that it was customary in Clermont County to 
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omit “manner of conviction” information, and therefore that the omission must be 
regarded as intentional and not clerical, has no legal basis. 
{¶ 11} Based on Lester, the court of appeals was correct to dismiss the 
mandamus claim as moot.  State ex rel. Womack v. Marsh, 128 Ohio St.3d 303, 
2011-Ohio-229, 943 N.E.2d 1010, ¶ 10, quoting State ex rel. Dehler v. Kelly, 123 
Ohio St.3d 297, 2009-Ohio-5259, 915 N.E.2d 1223, ¶ 1 (“ ‘mandamus will not 
compel the performance of an act that has already been performed’ ”); State ex 
rel. Walker v. Donnelly, 8th Dist. Cuyahoga No. 96307, 2011-Ohio-1106, 2011 
WL 826359, ¶ 3-4.  And because Snead had an adequate remedy, the court of 
appeals correctly dismissed his prohibition claim. 
{¶ 12} Alternatively, Snead argues that the March 11, 2002 judgment 
entry was not a final, appealable order, because it did not reflect the disposition of 
the three felony charges in case No. 2001-CR-00091.  Snead cites a number of 
decisions in which a criminal defendant was tried on multiple charges, the trial 
court entered final judgment as to one but not all of the counts, and the appellate 
court dismissed the appeal for lack of a final, appealable order.  See, e.g., State v. 
Brown, 59 Ohio App.3d 1, 569 N.E.2d 1068 (8th Dist.1989). 
{¶ 13} Those cases are distinguishable.  The Clermont County Common 
Pleas Court’s docket for case No. 2001-CR-00091 shows that the state voluntarily 
dismissed all charges filed under that case number on February 27, 2002, before 
the final sentencing entry in case No. 2001-CR-00010 was issued.  The March 11, 
2002 entry disposed of all charges remaining in Snead’s case, which is all that 
was required to create a final, appealable order.  Nothing in Crim.R. 32(C) or this 
court’s jurisprudence requires a trial court to include as part of its sentencing 
entry the disposition of charges that were previously dismissed by the 
prosecution. 
{¶ 14} Based on the foregoing, we affirm the judgment of the court of 
appeals. 
January Term, 2014 
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Judgment affirmed. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and PFEIFER, O’DONNELL, LANZINGER, KENNEDY, 
FRENCH, and O’NEILL, JJ., concur. 
____________________ 
Robert A. Snead, pro se. 
D. Vincent Faris, Clermont County Prosecuting Attorney, and Judith 
Brant, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee. 
________________________