IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF OHIO 

EASTERN DIVISION 

Robert L. Hillman, 

Plaintiff, 

v. 

State of Ohio, et al., 

Defendants. 

Case No. 2:11-cv-607 

JUDGE MICHAEL H. WATSON 

Magistrate Judge Kemp 

OPINION AND ORDER 

Robert L. Hillman, a state prisoner, filed this action after the Ohio courts denied 

his application to expunge a record of certain criminal charges which had been filed 

against him, but for which he was not convicted. Essentially, he is asking this Court to 

reverse the state courts and order his record expunged. The defendants moved to 

dismiss his claims, and a Magistrate Judge has recommended that the Court grant the 

motion and dismiss this case in its entirety. Mr. Hillman objects to that 

recommendation. For the reasons which follow, his objections will be overruled and this 

case will be dismissed. 

I. 

If a party objects within the allotted time to a report and recommendation, the 

Court "shall make a de novo determination of those portions of the report or specified 

proposed findings or recommendations to which objection is made." 28 U.S.C. §636(b) 

(1 ); see a/so Fed.R.Civ.P. 72(b). Upon review, the Court "may accept, reject, or modify, 

in whole or in part, the findings or recommendations made by the magistrate judge." 28 

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U.S.C. §636(b)(1 ). 

II. 

Mr. Hillman does not appear to object to the way in which the Report and 

Recommendation describes the issues in this case, or in the related state court 

proceedings, so the Court adopts that description. Briefly, Mr. Hillman was charged 

with a number of offenses in Franklin County in 1994 and 1995. The ones which are 

relevant to this lawsuit were either subject to a nolle prosequi entered by the 

prosecution or otherwise dismissed. In 2008, Mr. Hillman moved, unsuccessfully, to 

have the records of these charges expunged. The state court of appeals ultimately 

concluded that the trial court did not abuse its discretion when it determined that Mr. 

Hillman's interest in having his records expunged was outweighed by the government's 

interest in maintaining free and open access to records of criminal proceedings. Mr. 

Hillman claims that this decision was erroneous because, in fact, there is no 

governmental interest being served by keeping these charges a matter of public record. 

He argues that the state court decision is itself an abuse of discretion and inconsistent 

with his constitutional rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the United 

States Constitution. 

The Report and Recommendation did not reach the merits of his claims because 

it found them jurisdictionally barred by the Rooker-Feldman doctrine. As explained 

more fully in the Report and Recommendation, that doctrine reflects a somewhat 

straightforward interpretation of federal constitutional and statutory law: if the losing 

party in a state court action wants to have the state court decision reviewed on its 

merits by a federal court, the only proper way to obtain that review (absent some 

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special proceeding like an application for a writ of habeas corpus) is to petition the 

United States Supreme Court to take the case. A United States District Court, such as 

this one, has no statutory jurisdiction to consider appeals from state court decisions; its 

jurisdiction is generally limited to cases which begin here and are within the Court's 

original jurisdiction. A District Court is simply not an appellate court, and the appellate 

jurisdiction which exists within the federal court system to review state court decisions 

for error is vested by statute, see 28 U.S.C. §1257(a), in the United States Supreme 

Court ("Final judgments or decrees rendered by the highest court of a State in which a 

decision could be had, may be reviewed by the Supreme Court by writ of certiorari ... "). 

See Lance v. Dennis, 546 U.S. 459, 463 (2006) ("under what has come to be known as 

the Rooker-Feldman doctrine, lower federal courts are precluded from exercising 

appellate jurisdiction over final state-court judgments"). 

In his objection, Mr. Hillman does not directly address the fact that he is 

attempting to have this Court review the state court decision for error, or that such 

review is barred by Rooker-Feldman. Rather, he argues first that the Magistrate Judge 

should have recused himself from the case due to bias, in that Mr. Hillman had filed a 

misconduct complaint against him based on a ruling made in another case. On the 

merits, he cites the Ohio statute which allows for the filing of motions for expungement 

and argues that the purpose of expungement, or sealing the records, is to place the 

parties back in the position which they occupied prior to the filing of the charges that 

were later dismissed. Thus, he contends that expungement should have been ordered. 

The issue of the Magistrate Judge's recusal is not a basis for rejecting the Report 

and Recommendation. Since Mr. Hillman has filed objections, this Court reviews the 

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issues de novo, without deference to the Magistrate Judge's determination of those 

same issues. Additionally, alleged bias stemming from a judicial ruling, as opposed to 

personal bias against a litigant, is not grounds for disqualifying a judge. See, e.g., 

0/iverv. Michigan St. Bd. ofEduc., 508 F.2d 178 (6th Cir. 1974). Thus, there is no 

merit in Mr. Hillman's first objection. 

His second objection, which again raises the merits of his motion for 

expungement, is simply misplaced. The question raised by the motion to dismiss and 

addressed in the Report and Recommendation is not whether, under Ohio law, Mr. 

Hillman is entitled to have his record expunged, or even whether the state courts 

abused their discretion in denying his motions for expungement. Rather, the question is 

whether this Court can sit in review of the state court and, if it disagrees with how the 

state court decided the issues, decide them differently. As noted, Congress has not 

granted District Courts the power to do that, and without the power to decide, the Court 

lacks jurisdiction. Mr. Hillman has not presented any arguments in favor of the Court's 

jurisdiction, and the Rooker-Feldman doctrine both applies to this case and prevents 

the Court from exercising jurisdiction. Therefore, this case must be dismissed. 

The Court notes that the Report and Recommendation liberally construed the 

complaint as stating an independent claim under the Equal Protection Clause based on 

the state courts' refusal to provide Mr. Hillman with a free transcript of the proceedings 

in the state trial court. His objection appears either to abandon any such claim, or to 

indicate that he never intended to make that claim at all. The Report and 

Recommendation's analysis of any potential Equal Protection claim is also correct, so 

either way the potential for an independent Equal Protection claim does not save this 

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case from dismissal. 

Ill. 

For all of the reasons stated in this Opinion and Order, and after a de novo 

review of the issues, the Court ADOPTS AND AFFIRMS the Report and 

Recommendation filed on May 9, 2012, and OVERRULES the objections filed on May 

16, 2012. Any objections to the earlier Report and Recommendation are deemed moot 

and therefore OVERRULED. The defendants' motion to dismiss (ECF No.8) is 

GRANTED. This case is DISMISSED for want of jurisdiction. 

IT IS SO ORDERED. 

Ml HAEL H. WA N, JUDGE 

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT 

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