Title: State ex rel. Swain v. Harris

State: ohio

Issuer: Ohio Supreme Court

Document:

[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State 
ex rel. Swain v. Harris, Slip Opinion No. 2018-Ohio-4066.] 
 
 
 
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-4066 
THE STATE EX REL. SWAIN, APPELLANT, v. HARRIS, WARDEN, APPELLEE. 
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 
may be cited as State ex rel. Swain v. Harris, Slip Opinion No.  
2018-Ohio-4066.] 
Habeas Corpus—Erie County ceded to Ohio in the Treaty of Fort Industry—Court 
of appeals’ dismissal of petition affirmed. 
(No. 2018-0464—Submitted June 26, 2018—Decided October 10, 2018.) 
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Warren County, No. CA2018-01-009. 
________________ 
 
Per Curiam. 
{¶ 1} Appellant, Sean Swain, appeals the judgment of the Twelfth District 
Court of Appeals dismissing his petition for a writ of habeas corpus.  We affirm. 
Background 
{¶ 2} Swain was convicted of aggravated murder in 1991, but his conviction 
was reversed on appeal and the cause was remanded back to the Erie County 
Common Pleas Court.  State v. Swain, 6th Dist. Erie No. E-91-80, 1993 WL 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
 
2
434581, *1, 8 (Oct. 29, 1993).  In 1995, Swain was retried, convicted of murder 
and aggravated murder, and sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole 
after 20 years.  See State v. Swain, 6th Dist. Erie No. E-95-011, 1996 WL 402026, 
*1 (July 19, 1996) (affirming Swain’s 1995 conviction).  He is currently 
incarcerated at the Warren Correctional Institution. 
{¶ 3} On January 17, 2018, Swain filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus 
in the Twelfth District Court of Appeals against appellee, Warden Chae Harris.  
Swain alleged that the trial court in which he was convicted lacked jurisdiction 
because it was operating outside the territory of Ohio.  According to Swain, Erie 
County is located in land recognized as sovereign Native American Territory under 
Article III of the Treaty of Greenville, signed August 3, 1795. 
{¶ 4} Warden Harris filed a motion to dismiss.  On March 8, 2018, the court 
of appeals granted Harris’s motion to dismiss, stating that “despite [Swain’s] 
argument to the contrary, he was convicted by a court of competent jurisdiction.”  
Swain timely appealed. 
Legal analysis 
{¶ 5} On appeal, Swain continues to maintain that his conviction and 
sentence are void based on the terms of the Treaty of Greenville.  He is correct that 
the Treaty of Greenville fixed the western boundary of the United States so that 
today’s Erie County was not included in the Ohio Territory but remained in the 
possession of Native Americans.  Ohio History Central, Treaty of Greenville 
(1795), 
http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Treaty_of_Greenville_(1795) 
(accessed September 5, 2018).  However, 
 
following the Treaty of Greenville, numerous other treaties were 
entered whereby the various Native-American tribes residing in the 
region “ceded land to the United States in a piecemeal fashion.”  See 
Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma v. Logan, 577 F.3d 634, 637 (6th 
January Term, 2018 
 
3
Cir.2009).  By the end of the 1830s, the tribes “had conveyed all of 
their lands in Ohio to the United States,” and “[b]y 1839, the main 
tribal organization had transferred to Kansas.”  Id. at 636. 
 
Coffey v. Warden, Warren Corr. Inst., S.D.Ohio No. 1:16-cv-353, 2016 WL 
7106238, *2 (Dec. 5, 2016). 
{¶ 6} Specifically, in the Treaty of Fort Industry—which was signed on July 
4, 1805—representatives of the Wyandot (Huron), Ottawa, Objibwe (Chippewa), 
Munsee, Lenape (Delaware), Potawatomi, and Shawnee tribes relinquished 
500,000 acres of land south of Lake Erie and west of the Cuyahoga River in 
northeastern Ohio to the United States.  Ohio History Central, Treaty of Fort 
Industry (1805), http://www.ohiohistorycentral.org/w/Treaty_of_Fort_Industry_ 
(1805) (accessed Sept. 5, 2018).  That territory, known then and now as the 
Firelands (or the Sufferers’ Land), included all of present-day Erie County, 
including Sandusky, the county seat where Swain was tried and convicted.  See 
Firelands 
Council 
of 
Historical 
Societies, 
About 
the 
Firelands, 
http://firelandsohio.ericebinger.com/?page_id=2 (accessed Sept. 5, 2018); see also 
1 Howe, Historical Collections of Ohio in Two Volumes, 565 (1904). 
{¶ 7} Swain’s assertion that Erie County was never ceded to the United 
States is incorrect.  Therefore, he has stated no basis for relief in habeas corpus. 
Judgment affirmed. 
O’CONNOR, C.J., and O’DONNELL, KENNEDY, FRENCH, FISCHER, DEWINE, 
and DEGENARO, JJ., concur. 
_________________ 
Sean Swain, pro se. 
Michael DeWine, Attorney General, and Stephanie Watson, Assistant 
Attorney General, for appellee. 
_________________