Opinion ID: 4472525
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Gaskins I’s tenuous foundation

Text: {¶ 19} In Gaskins I, a prison inmate brought a habeas claim in a court of appeals, initially raising a constitutional challenge to his criminal conviction. Gaskins I at 149. That claim was dismissed as clearly meritless. Id. at 150. But the inmate also had asked the court of appeals for leave to amend his petition to add an improper-bindover claim based on the juvenile court’s purported failure to have him undergo mental and physical examinations as required by a statute that was in effect at that time. Id. at 149-150. The court of appeals did not allow the inmate to amend his petition. Id. at 150. On appeal, we held that the court of appeals should have allowed the amendment and considered the bindover claim. Id. We stated that “without a proper bindover procedure   , a juvenile court’s jurisdiction is exclusive and cannot be waived.” Id. at 151, citing Wilson, 73 Ohio St.3d 40, 652 N.E.2d 196, at paragraphs one and two of the syllabus. {¶ 20} The central holding of Gaskins I—that a juvenile offender may collaterally attack an adult criminal conviction in a habeas action based on a bindover error—has been repeated by this court numerous times. For example, in Johnson v. Timmerman-Cooper, 93 Ohio St.3d 614, 617, 757 N.E.2d 1153 (2001), we granted a writ of habeas corpus because the bindover was substantively invalid and, as a result, the juvenile “had not been lawfully transferred to [the adult] court.” In other cases, we have acknowledged the rule of Gaskins I but found it to be inapplicable under the facts of the case. See, e.g., State ex rel. Fryerson v. Tate, 84 Ohio St.3d 481, 484485, 705 N.E.2d 353 (1999); Agee v. Russell, 92 Ohio St.3d 540, 544, 751 N.E.2d 1043 (2001). And in State v. Golphin, 81 Ohio St.3d 543, 692 N.E.2d 608 (1998), a case concerning a defendant’s appeal of his adult-court conviction (therefore not involving a collateral attack), we applied Gaskins I and held that the juvenile court had “failed to accomplish a legal transfer of its jurisdiction” and that the criminal 7 SUPREME COURT OF OHIO prosecution in adult court was “void ab initio” because the juvenile court had failed to provide for a physical examination of the juvenile, id. at 547. {¶ 21} Gaskins I’s foundation was Wilson, a case in which the state prosecuted a juvenile in adult court under the mistaken belief that he was an adult when he committed his offense. In fact, Wilson was a juvenile when he committed the offense, and he was never bound over from a juvenile court. Wilson at 42, 44. Because Wilson had been deprived of a bindover proceeding altogether, this court agreed with the court of appeals that the adult court lacked jurisdiction. We held that “[a]bsent a proper bindover procedure   , the juvenile court has the exclusive subject matter jurisdiction over any case concerning a child who is alleged to be a delinquent.” Id. at paragraph one of the syllabus. And “[b]ecause the general division of the court of common pleas lacked subject matter jurisdiction to convict Wilson, the judgment of conviction against him was void ab initio.” Id. at 44. See also State ex rel. Harris v. Anderson, 76 Ohio St.3d 193, 195, 667 N.E.2d 1 (1996) (habeas case involving an allegedly mistaken belief that a child was an adult). Significantly, the Wilson court recognized that the General Assembly had compelled this result—the bindover statute expressly provided that “ ‘[a]ny prosecution that is had in a criminal court on the mistaken belief that the child was eighteen years of age or older at the time of the commission of the offense shall be deemed a nullity.’ ” (Emphasis added in Wilson.) Wilson at 44, quoting former R.C. 2151.26(E), Am.Sub.H.B. No. 27, 144 Ohio Laws Part II, 2745, 2747 (that provision, with nonsubstantive differences, is now R.C. 2152.12(H)). {¶ 22} Gaskins I significantly extended Wilson’s holding. The problem in Wilson was that a juvenile-court proceeding had never happened at all. The state had not used “the only method by which a juvenile court may relinquish its exclusive original jurisdiction concerning a delinquent child,” Wilson, 73 Ohio St.3d at 44, 652 N.E.2d 196. That is quite different from Gaskins I, in which the subject-matter 8 January Term, 2020 jurisdiction of a juvenile court was invoked, a bindover proceeding was held, and subject-matter jurisdiction ostensibly was transferred to an adult court. {¶ 23} What is more, Gaskins I abandoned Wilson’s analytical focus on statutory language. The Wilson court rightly allowed the legislature to determine the sentencing court’s subject-matter jurisdiction. See Article IV, Section 4(B) of the Ohio Constitution (“The courts of common pleas and divisions thereof shall have such original jurisdiction over all justiciable matters    as may be provided by law” [emphasis added]). The Gaskins I court, in contrast, did not examine whether the bindover statute expressly made the juvenile court’s error jurisdictional. This court in Gaskins I simply applied Wilson’s broadly worded holding, despite the clear differences between the two cases. {¶ 24} Notably, the parties both seem to accept that Wilson’s focus on the statutory text was correct; they both cite United States Supreme Court cases that ultimately ask whether the legislature has “clearly state[d]” that a particular statutory requirement is jurisdictional, e.g., Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., 546 U.S. 500, 515-516, 126 S.Ct. 1235, 163 L.E.2d 1097 (2006). Indeed, we have used the same approach when deciding whether statutory requirements in other contexts are jurisdictional. See Pryor v. Dir., Dept. of Job & Family Servs., 148 Ohio St.3d 1, 2016-Ohio-2907, 68 N.E.3d 729, ¶ 14, 16; Nucorp, Inc. v. Montgomery Cty. Bd. of Revision, 64 Ohio St.2d 20, 22, 412 N.E.2d 947 (1980).