[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State 

ex rel. Keith v. Dept. of Rehab. & Corr., Slip Opinion No. 2018-Ohio-3128.] 

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-3128

THE STATE EX REL. KEITH, APPELLANT, v. DEPARTMENT OF REHABILITATION 

& CORRECTION ET AL., APPELLEES. 

[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it 

may be cited as State ex rel. Keith v. Dept. of Rehab. & Corr., Slip Opinion No. 

2018-Ohio-3128.] 

Mandamus—Inmate failed to show that his parole record contains false or 

misleading information that might have adversely affected parole board’s 

consideration of his parole request—Court of appeals’ denial of writ 

affirmed. 

(Nos. 2017-1015 and 2017-1214—Submitted February 13, 2018—Decided 

August 8, 2018.) 

APPEALS from the Court of Appeals for Franklin County, 

No. 15AP-1080, 2017-Ohio-4406. 

________________ 

 

 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

2

Per Curiam. 

{¶ 1} In these consolidated appeals, appellant, Bernard R. Keith, appeals 

the judgment of the Tenth District Court of Appeals denying his petition for a writ 

of mandamus to compel appellee Ohio Parole Board to hold a parole hearing at 

which his parole request is given “meaningful consideration.” We affirm the 

judgment of the court of appeals. 

Background 

{¶ 2} Keith is a state inmate serving an indeterminate sentence. Following 

a hearing held in February 2012, the parole board denied Keith parole, in part based 

on its finding that he had been previously paroled eight times. State ex rel. Keith 

v. Adult Parole Auth., 141 Ohio St.3d 375, 2014-Ohio-4270, 24 N.E.3d 1132, ¶ 6 

(“Keith I”). The board set the next hearing for 62 months later (i.e., April 2017). 

{¶ 3} On May 8, 2012, Keith filed an original action in the Tenth District 

Court of Appeals seeking a writ of mandamus to compel the board to correct 

allegedly inaccurate information in his parole record. The court of appeals denied 

the writ as moot, finding that the board had corrected the inaccurate information in 

Keith’s parole record and subsequently had decided not to modify its previous 

decision. Id. at ¶ 13. 

{¶ 4} On October 7, 2014, we reversed and granted a writ of mandamus. 

Id. at ¶ 32. We held that Keith had made a showing that there may still be 

substantive errors in his parole record that, if not corrected, may influence the 

board’s consideration of his parole and prevent his application from receiving 

meaningful consideration, id. at ¶ 21, 30, and we ordered the board “to investigate 

Keith’s allegations and correct any substantive errors in the record used to consider 

him for parole,” id. at ¶ 32. 

{¶ 5} In October 2014, the parole board notified Keith that it had corrected 

some of the parole-record errors that he had alleged in the Keith I litigation. 
January Term, 2018 

3

{¶ 6} The new hearing took place on February 17, 2015. Several weeks 

later, the parole board informed Keith that it had denied his parole request and that 

his next hearing would be in April 2017 (the same date that had been set for his 

next hearing when he was denied parole in February 2012).1 His request for 

reconsideration was denied. 

{¶ 7} On November 30, 2015, Keith filed a second petition for a writ of 

mandamus against the board in the Tenth District Court of Appeals. Keith’s second 

petition alleged that his parole request did not receive “meaningful consideration” 

at the February 2015 hearing, as required by Keith I. As evidence of the alleged 

lack of meaningful consideration, Keith pointed to the fact that the parole board did 

not change the date of his next parole hearing, despite the corrections that the board 

had made to the information in his parole record. 

{¶ 8} After the parties submitted evidence and briefs, the Tenth District 

magistrate appointed to hear the case issued a decision on February 17, 2017, in 

which he concluded that Keith had failed to show by clear and convincing evidence 

that his parole record contained any significant errors or that the board had relied 

on substantively inaccurate information. Keith filed objections to the magistrate’s 

decision. 

{¶ 9} On June 20, 2017, the Tenth District Court of Appeals overruled 

Keith’s objections, adopted the magistrate’s findings of fact and conclusions of law, 

and denied the request for a writ of mandamus. The court of appeals denied Keith’s 

application for reconsideration and motion for relief from judgment. 

{¶ 10} Keith filed two notices of appeal. On July 25, 2017, he appealed the 

court of appeals’ denial of the writ (case No. 2017-1015). And on August 31, 2017, 

he appealed the denial of his application for reconsideration (case No. 2017-1214). 

 

1

 The parole hearing that had been scheduled for April 2017 was actually held on February 9, 2017. 

At that hearing, the parole board denied Keith’s parole request and scheduled the next hearing for 

February 2020. 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

4

On November 1, 2017, we consolidated the two appeals. 151 Ohio St.3d 1423, 

2017-Ohio-8371, 84 N.E.3d 1062. 

Procedural motions

{¶ 11} On November 15, 2017, Keith filed (in both cases) an unopposed 

motion to reduce the number of copies of his briefs required for filing. We grant 

the motion. 

{¶ 12} On November 17, he filed a motion for leave to file an amended 

cover page for his merit brief in case No. 2017-1015 to reflect its consolidation with 

case No. 2017-1214. We grant that motion. 

{¶ 13} Finally, Keith has filed three requests for judicial notice. The first, 

filed November 15, 2017, asked this court to take judicial notice of a motion for a 

stay that he filed in this court on October 20. Because he withdrew the stay motion 

on December 19, that request is denied as moot. Next, on December 19, he filed a 

request that this court take judicial notice that he placed his reply brief in the 

institutional mailbox within the time allowed by this court’s rules. But because the 

reply brief was received and filed and because no one has challenged its timeliness, 

we deny that request as moot. In addition, Keith’s reply brief complains that pages 

were missing from the copy of the board’s merit brief that he received. Although 

he presents this complaint as an “issue for judicial notice,” he asks for no relief in 

connection with it. 

Merits of the appeal

{¶ 14} In his merit brief, Keith asserts nine propositions of law, but there is 

only one issue of consequence: has Keith demonstrated that the parole board failed 

to give his parole request meaningful consideration at his February 2015 hearing, 

as a result of materially false or misleading information in his parole record? 

{¶ 15} As previously noted, Keith’s claim is premised on the fact that after 

the February 2015 hearing, the parole board did not change the scheduled date of 

his next parole hearing. He sees that as evidence that the board’s review of his 
January Term, 2018 

5

parole request was cursory and/or biased. But there is no basis for Keith’s 

assumption that the board’s correction of the errors in his parole record should have 

caused the board to reach a different decision. It is equally possible that he 

overstated the significance of the inaccuracies in his record and that a fair review 

of his record would lead the board to make the same decision. 

{¶ 16} The issue in Keith I concerned the problem of materially false or 

misleading information in an inmate’s parole record. And on that score, Keith has 

only one allegation: he claims that his parole record contains an entry indicating 

that he participated in an education program referred to as “GED Fast Track” even 

though he had not enrolled in that program. However, Keith has suggested no 

reason to believe that this allegedly erroneous information was material to his 

parole request. And contrary to his assertion, this court in Keith I did not hold that 

a writ of mandamus will issue every time an inmate identifies a factual error in his 

parole record. Rather, a writ will issue when there is a credible claim of an error 

that may prevent the inmate’s application from receiving meaningful consideration. 

Keith I, 141 Ohio St.3d 375, 2014-Ohio-4270, 24 N.E.3d 1132, at ¶ 21; id. at ¶ 30 

(requiring “a showing that there may be substantive errors in [the inmate’s] record 

that may influence the [APA’s] consideration of his parole”). 

{¶ 17} Keith has failed to demonstrate the elements of his eponymous 

claim: that his parole record contains false or misleading information that might 

have adversely affected the parole board’s consideration of his parole request. We 

therefore affirm the judgment of the court of appeals. 

Judgment affirmed. 

O’CONNOR, C.J., and O’DONNELL, KENNEDY, FRENCH, FISCHER, DEWINE,

and DEGENARO, JJ., concur. 

_________________ 

Bernard R. Keith, pro se. 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

6

Michael DeWine, Attorney General, and George Horvath, Assistant 

Attorney General, for appellees. 

_________________