[Cite as State v. Padgett, 2023-Ohio-4357.]

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF OHIO

THIRD APPELLATE DISTRICT

CRAWFORD COUNTY

STATE OF OHIO,

CASE NO. 3-22-53

 PLAINTIFF-APPELLEE,

 v.

AMANDA PADGETT, O P I N I O N

 DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.

Appeal from Crawford County Common Pleas Court

Trial Court No. 00-CR-0130

Judgment Reversed

Date of Decision: December 4, 2023

APPEARANCES:

Autumn D. Adams for Appellant
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WALDICK, J.,

{¶1} Defendant-appellant, Amanda Padgett (“Padgett”), appeals the 

November 28, 2022 judgment of the Crawford County Court of Common Pleas

sentencing her to six months in jail for a community control violation. For the 

reasons set forth below, we reverse.

Factual and Procedural Background

{¶2} On September 12, 2000, the Crawford County Grand Jury returned an 

indictment against Padgett, charging her with nine counts of Forgery, each count a 

fifth-degree felony in violation of R.C. 2913.31.

{¶3} On October 30, 2000, an arraignment was held and Padgett entered an 

initial plea of not guilty.

{¶4} On November 29, 2000, a change of plea hearing was held. At that 

time, Padgett withdrew her plea of not guilty and pled guilty to the nine-count 

indictment. The trial court ordered a presentence investigation and scheduled 

sentencing for a later date.

{¶5} On January 2, 2001, a sentencing hearing was held and Padgett was 

sentenced to a three-year term of community control. The sentence was journalized 

by entry filed on January 4, 2001.

{¶6} On February 13, 2003, the trial court issued a bench warrant for 

Padgett’s arrest. The warrant included the information that Padgett had failed to 

abide by the conditions of her supervision and that her whereabouts were unknown.
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{¶7} On February 9, 2004, the trial court filed a “Nunc Pro Tunc Judgment 

Entry.” Omitting the caption, that entry reads in its entirety, “It has come to the 

Court’s attention that when the original Bench Warrant was issued on February 13, 

2003, due to an oversight, the offender’s community control supervision was not 

tolled. Therefore, the offender’s community control supervision from February 13, 

2003 has been tolled.” (Nunc Pro Tunc Judgment Entry, Docket No. 19).

{¶8} On September 29, 2022, Padgett was located and served with the arrest 

warrant that had been issued by the court in February of 2003. 

{¶9} On September 30, 2022, a “Notice of Violation” containing a motion to 

revoke the community control was filed by the Crawford County Probation 

Department. Specifically, that motion alleged that (1) Padgett had ceased reporting 

for her required monthly visits to the probation office in April of 2002 and that her 

whereabouts had been unknown since that time; (2) Padgett had failed to pay the 

court-ordered restitution in the case; and (3) in April of 2002, Padgett had changed 

her address without notifying her supervising officer. On those bases, the motion 

requested that Padgett’s community control be revoked and sentence imposed.

{¶10} On October 31, 2022, Padgett filed a motion asserting that the trial 

court lacked jurisdiction to proceed on the pending community control revocation 

motion, on the basis that Padgett had been sentenced to a three-year term of 

community control in January of 2001 and the three-year term had since expired 

without it having been tolled by the trial court and without probation revocation 
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proceedings having been initiated within the required time-frame. The motion also 

asserted that, should the trial court proceed with the revocation hearing, Padgett 

could not be sentenced to a prison term because she had not been given the notice 

required by statute at the original sentencing hearing.1

{¶11} On November 23, 2022, a community control revocation hearing was 

held. At that time, Padgett admitted the alleged community control violations but 

reasserted her objection to the proceeding. In response to Padgett’s objection, the 

prosecution argued that the arrest warrant issued by the trial court in February of 

2003, and the language contained therein, had served to preserve the court’s 

jurisdiction. The state, however, agreed with Padgett’s assertion that a prison term 

could not be imposed because the trial court had not properly reserved a specific 

prison term at the time of sentencing.

{¶12} Without setting forth any legal analysis on the record, the trial court 

ruled that it did have jurisdiction to impose a community control violation sanction. 

The trial court found that Padgett had violated her community control, ordered that 

community control be revoked, and sentenced Padgett to six months in the county 

jail, with 46 days of credit for jail time previously served. The trial court stayed the 

sentence pending appeal.

1 See, e.g., State v. Brooks, 103 Ohio St.3d 134, 2004-Ohio-4746.
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{¶13} On December 22, 2022, Padgett filed this appeal, in which she has 

raised one assignment of error for our review.

Assignment of Error

The State failed to initiate any community control revocation 

procedures until almost 20 years after Padgett’s community 

control should have been over thus the Trial Court did not have 

authority over Padgett to enforce any sanctions against her.

{¶14} In the sole assignment of error, Padgett asserts that the trial court 

lacked the authority to conduct the community control revocation proceeding in this 

case. Specifically, Padgett argues that her original three-year term of community 

control had long since expired because it was never properly tolled by the court after 

Padgett absconded supervision and, further, that the potential five-year maximum 

period of community control had also expired without probation revocation 

proceedings having been initiated prior to that expiration. In support of her position, 

Padgett relies on State v. Rue, 164 Ohio St.3d 270, 2020-Ohio-6706.

Analysis

{¶15} R.C. 2929.15 governs community control sanctions for felonies. In 

relevant part, R.C. 2929.15(A)(1) provides that a court “may directly impose a 

sentence that consists of one or more community control sanctions” when 

sentencing an offender for a felony that does not require the imposition of a prison 

term, a mandatory prison term, or a term of life imprisonment. “The duration of all 
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community control sanctions imposed on an offender * * * shall not exceed five 

years.” Id. 

{¶16} R.C. 2929.15(A)(1) further provides that a sentence of community 

control may be tolled under certain conditions:

If the offender absconds or otherwise leaves the jurisdiction of the 

court in which the offender resides without obtaining permission from 

the court or the offender’s probation officer to leave the jurisdiction 

of the court, or if the offender is confined in any institution for the 

commission of any offense while under a community control sanction, 

the period of the community control sanction ceases to run until the 

offender is brought before the court for its further action.

R.C. 2929.15(A)(1).

{¶17} In State v. Rue, 164 Ohio St.3d 270, 2020-Ohio-6706, the Supreme 

Court of Ohio addressed a situation analogous to that of the instant case, where a 

felony offender sentenced to community control had absconded supervision but

where the commencement of the revocation proceedings did not occur before the 

expiration of the community-control term. Id., at ¶ 1-11. On those facts, the Ohio 

Supreme Court held that pursuant to R.C. 2929.15(A)(1), the tolling of a community 

control term is not automatically self-executing. Rather, the Supreme Court held, 

as it had previously, that “a trial court is ‘authorized to conduct proceedings on the 

alleged community-control violations even though they were conducted after the 

expiration of the term of community control, provided that the notice of violations 

was properly given and the revocation proceedings were commenced before the 

expiration.’” Rue, at ¶ 18, quoting State ex rel. Hemsley v. Unruh, 128 Ohio St.3d 
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307, 2011-Ohio-226, ¶ 13 (emphasis added). Thus, pursuant to the holding in Rue, 

a trial court lacks the authority to conduct a community control revocation 

proceeding initiated after the expiration of the community control term, unless some 

other circumstance intervened to render the original expiration date inoperative. Id. 

at ¶ 20. 

{¶18} In the instant case, Padgett was sentenced to a three-year term of 

community control on January 4, 2001. The community control revocation 

proceeding challenged by Padgett on appeal was initiated on September 30, 2022, 

which was well over 18 years after Padgett’s three-year community-control term 

would have expired on January 4, 2004. Accordingly, pursuant to State v. Rue, 

supra, the trial court lacked the authority to conduct the community control 

revocation hearing in 2022 unless Padgett’s community-control term had been 

previously tolled by some other qualifying circumstance before the term expired.

{¶19} At the November 23, 2022, community control revocation hearing, the 

prosecution argued that the arrest warrant issued for Padgett by the trial court on 

February 13, 2003, had served to preserve the court’s authority to proceed with the 

revocation hearing.2 We disagree. While that arrest warrant contained language 

stating that Padgett “has failed to abide by conditions of supervision” and stating 

that her whereabouts were unknown, we do not find that merely issuing the arrest 

2 The State of Ohio did not file a merit brief in this appeal.
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warrant constitutes a “determination” by the trial court in “timely initiated 

proceedings” that the defendant had absconded, as required by the Ohio Supreme 

Court’s decision in Rue. Additionally, as the Ohio Supreme Court deemed 

necessary in Rue, the arrest warrant contained no language that would have served

to put Padgett on notice, even constructively, that her term of community control 

had been extended, or tolled, as a result of her failure to abide by the conditions of 

her supervision. Finally, we note that the defendant in State v. Rue also had warrants 

issued for his arrest after absconding supervision and, while not addressed directly 

by the Ohio Supreme Court in its decision, the fact that a warrant had been issued 

was seemingly not a factor relevant to the issue of whether the community control 

term had been tolled by the trial court.

{¶20} While not argued by the prosecution at the revocation hearing in 

response to Padgett’s objection, we have also considered whether the “nunc pro 

tunc” judgment entry filed by the trial court on February 9, 2004, served to toll 

Padgett’s term of community control. As noted above, that entry reads:

It has come to the Court’s attention that when the original Bench 

Warrant was issued on February 13, 2003, due to an oversight, the 

offender’s community control supervision was not tolled. Therefore, 

the offender’s community control supervision from February 13, 2003 

has been tolled.” 

(Nunc Pro Tunc Judgment Entry, Docket No. 19).

{¶21} However, as this court explained in Lowery v. Est. of White, 3d Dist. 

Allen No. 1-2000-15, 2000-Ohio-1906: 
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The purpose of a nunc pro tunc order is to have the judgment of the 

court reflect its true action so as to make the entry speak the truth. 

McKay v. McKay (1985), 24 Ohio App.3d 74, 75, 493 N.E.2d 317. A 

nunc pro tunc order may not be used to show what the court might or 

should have decided, or intended to decide, but what it actually 

decided. Id. As this court has previously explained:

The purpose of a nunc pro tunc order is to correct the 

record, to explain now-for-then judicial action actually 

taken at some prior time, but mistakenly omitted or 

recited by the original entry. A nunc pro tunc order may 

not render a judgment or modify a judgment never made 

in the first instance. McKay v. McKay (1985), 24 Ohio 

App.3d 74, 75, 493 N.E.2d 317, 317-318. Such order 

may only “record[ ] judicial action previously and 

actually taken.” State v. Breedlove (1988), 46 Ohio 

App.3d 78, 81, 546 N.E.2d 420, 423.

Showcase Homes, Inc. v. Ravenna Sav. Bank (1998), 126 Ohio 

App.3d 328, 330, 710 N.E.2d 347.

Id., at *1-2.

{¶22} In the instant case, the trial court improperly attempted to use the 

February 9, 2004 judgment entry to retroactively implement an order that had never 

been made. Accordingly, the February 9, 2004 “nunc pro tunc entry” is invalid. 

{¶23} Thus, on the facts of the case before us, we find that at the time the 

community control revocation action was filed on September 30, 2022, the original 

three-year term of community control had long since expired because that term was 

never tolled by the trial court after Padgett absconded supervision. Further, both the 

original three-year term of community control and the potential five-year maximum 

period of community control also expired without revocation proceedings having 
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been initiated prior to that expiration. For those reasons, and on the basis of State 

v. Rue, 164 Ohio St.3d 270, 2020-Ohio-6706, the trial court lacked the authority in 

this case to proceed with the community control revocation hearing in 2022.

{¶24} The assignment of error is sustained.

Conclusion

{¶25} Having found error prejudicial to the defendant-appellant, Amanda 

Padgett, in the particulars assigned and argued, the November 28, 2022 judgment 

of the Crawford County Court of Common Pleas is reversed.

Judgment Reversed

MILLER, P.J. and WILLAMOWSKI, J., concur.

/hls