Case Title: State v. Murray

Citation: 2018-Ohio-4958

Docket Number: 2017-0664

State: ohio

Court: Ohio Supreme Court

Date: 2018-12-13T00:00:00Z

Document:
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State 
v. Murray, Slip Opinion No. 2018-Ohio-4958.] 
 
 
 
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. 2018-OHIO-4958 
THE STATE OF OHIO, APPELLEE, v. MURRAY, APPELLANT. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 
may be cited as State v. Murray, Slip Opinion No. 2018-Ohio-4958.] 
Court of appeals’ judgment affirmed on authority of State v. Johnson. 
(No. 2017-0664―Submitted September 11, 2018―Decided December 13, 2018.) 
APPEAL from and CERTIFIED by the Court of Appeals for Highland County, 
No. 16CA24, 2017-Ohio-1293. 
_________________ 
{¶ 1} The judgment of the court of appeals is affirmed on the authority of 
State v. Johnson, ___ Ohio St.3d ___, 2018-Ohio-4957, ___ N.E.3d ___. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and O’DONNELL, KENNEDY, and FISCHER, JJ., concur. 
DEGENARO, J., concurs in judgment only, for the reasons stated in her 
separate opinion in State v. Johnson, ___ Ohio St.3d ___, 2018-Ohio-4957, ___ 
N.E.3d ___. 
DEWINE, J., dissents, with an opinion joined by FRENCH, J. 
_________________ 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
 
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DEWINE, J., dissenting. 
{¶ 2} In answering the certified-conflict question based on the decision in 
State v. Johnson, ___ Ohio St.3d ___, 2018-Ohio-4957, ___ N.E.3d ___, the 
majority continues to muddle our jurisprudence on void versus voidable sentences.  
Here, Nathaniel Murray seeks to collaterally challenge a sentence that was imposed 
in 2011.  I would conclude that because the error he alleges—regarding notification 
of the consequences of the commission of a new felony while on postrelease 
control—would, if established, render his sentence voidable and not void, it is not 
subject to collateral attack.  Therefore, the claim is barred by res judicata, and the 
lower courts should not have considered its merits.  Accordingly, I would dismiss 
the certified conflict as having been improvidently certified. 
{¶ 3} This appeal lays bare the damage done to the finality of judgments by 
this court’s recent approach to alleged postrelease-control errors.  Murray was 
initially sentenced in October 2010 for an importuning conviction.  He now claims 
that the trial court erred because it did not include in its sentencing entry the 
potential consequences he faced if he committed a felony while on postrelease 
control—namely, that in addition to a sentence for the new felony, a consecutive 
prison term could be imposed for the postrelease-control violation, see R.C. 
2929.141(A).  Murray did not appeal his 2010 conviction. 
{¶ 4} In September 2011, less than a year after his conviction and while on 
postrelease control for that conviction, Murray was convicted of a new crime.  He 
was sentenced to 14 months in prison for the new offense and a consecutive term 
of 1,617 days for the postrelease-control violation.  4th Dist. Highland No. 16CA24, 
2017-Ohio-1293, ¶ 5.  There is no indication that Murray asserted at his sentencing 
in 2011 that the trial court was precluded from imposing the consecutive term for 
the postrelease-control violation.  Nor did Murray appeal from his 2011 sentence. 
{¶ 5} Instead, Murray waited another five years to challenge the purported 
error in his 2010 sentence.  In 2016, Murray filed a motion to vacate his 2011 
January Term, 2018 
 
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sentence, arguing that the 2011 sentence should be set aside because of an alleged 
error in the imposition of postrelease control in 2010. 
{¶ 6} Under the traditional view of void and voidable sentences, any error 
in failing to include notification about R.C. 2929.141 penalties would have been 
nonjurisdictional and reviewable only on direct appeal.  State v. Grimes, 151 Ohio 
St.3d 19, 2017-Ohio-2927, 85 N.E.3d 700, ¶ 36 (DeWine, J., concurring in 
judgment only).  Thus, Murray’s 2016 motion should have been dismissed on the 
basis of res judicata.  But this court has recently maintained the anomalous view 
that postrelease-control errors make a sentence void.  Id. at ¶ 34-37.  Unlike other 
criminal-sentencing errors, which can be raised only on direct appeal, see R.C. 
2953.08; State v. Fischer, 128 Ohio St.3d 92, 2010-Ohio-6238, 942 N.E.2d 332,  
¶ 51 (Lanzinger, J., dissenting), we allow postrelease-control errors to be raised at 
any time.  Finality falls by the wayside. 
{¶ 7} This case underlines the havoc that approach has wrought.  Despite 
having failed to file a direct appeal from his 2010 sentence and despite having failed 
to file a direct appeal from his 2011 sentence, Murray gets yet another bite of the 
apple.  When postrelease control is in play, there is apparently no such thing as a 
final judgment.  The door to appeal is always open. 
{¶ 8} Our inconsistent jurisprudence on void versus voidable sentences has 
not gone unnoticed by appellate courts.  See State v. Straley, 2018-Ohio-3080, 107 
N.E.3d 8, ¶ 36 (4th Dist.) (Harsha, J., concurring) (“I agree that our result seems 
absurd, but that we must apply the law as pronounced by the Supreme Court of 
Ohio”);1 State v. Banks, 10th Dist. Franklin No. 15AP-653, 2015-Ohio-5372, ¶ 16, 
fn. 1 (“that a trial court properly possessed of jurisdiction produces a void sentence 
or order when it does what is prohibited by statute or fails to do what is required by 
                                          
 
1 This court has accepted the state’s appeal in Straley.  See 153 Ohio St.3d 1504, 2018-Ohio-4285, 
109 N.E.3d 1260. 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
 
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statute, seems problematic”); State v. Harper, 2018-Ohio-2529, __ N.E.3d __, ¶ 22 
(10th Dist.), fn. 5 (Sadler, J., dissenting). 
{¶ 9} Rather than continuing down this wrong road, this court ought to 
admit that it made a mistake when it concocted the notion that a postrelease-control 
error will make a sentence void.  Doing so would restore finality and certainty to 
what’s become an unnecessarily complicated area of criminal sentencing. 
 
FRENCH, J., concurs in the foregoing opinion. 
_________________ 
Timothy Young, Ohio Public Defender, and Allen Vender, Assistant Public 
Defender, for appellant. 
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