Court Opinion

ID: 9954901
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2024-03-27 13:08:34.976583+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:15:05.825402
License: Public Domain

[Cite as State v. Williams, 2024-Ohio-1148.]

                            IN THE COURT OF APPEALS
                   FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT OF OHIO
                              HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO

 STATE OF OHIO,                                     :   APPEAL NO. C-230333
                                                        TRIAL NO. B-1501161
         Plaintiff-Appellee,                        :

   vs.                                              :       O P I N I O N.

 CHRIS WILLIAMS,                                    :

     Defendant-Appellant.                           :

Criminal Appeal From: Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas

Judgments Appealed From Are: Affirmed

Date of Judgment Entry on Appeal: March 27, 2024

Melissa A. Powers, Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney, and Judith Anton Lapp,
Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for Plaintiff-Appellee,

Chris Williams, pro se.
                  OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS

ZAYAS, Presiding Judge.

       {¶1}    Defendant-appellant Chris Williams appeals the judgments of the

Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas denying his 2017 petition for postconviction

relief and dismissing his 2019 successive petition for postconviction relief. For the

following reasons, we affirm the lower court’s judgments.

                             Factual and Procedural History

       {¶2}    Following a jury trial in 2016, Williams was convicted of two counts of

rape of a child under the age of ten and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. The

victims were Williams’s two young daughters, who separately reported to their mother

the abuse that had occurred while they were on overnight visits with Williams. Prior

to trial and in open court, Williams rejected a plea offer by the state, against the advice

of counsel, that would have included only a six-year sentence. We affirmed his

convictions and sentences on direct appeal, overruling several assignments of error

including an Eighth-Amendment challenge to the sentences. State v. Williams, 2017-

Ohio-8898, 101 N.E.3d 547 (1st Dist.), discretionary appeal not allowed, 154 Ohio

St.3d 1502, 2019-Ohio-345, 116 N.E.3d 155.

       {¶3}    On September 6, 2017, Williams filed a petition for postconviction relief

setting forth the following claims: (1) trial counsel was ineffective for failing to call

mother’s boyfriend, a registered sex offender, as a witness; (2) trial counsel was

ineffective for failing to investigate the mother of the victims (Williams claimed that

mother only reported the crimes after she had discovered that Williams was seeking

visitation with his daughters); (3) his due-process rights were violated when the trial

court denied him reasonable bond and where the indictment listed a period of time

over which the offenses occurred instead of a specific date; and (4) his sentences

violated the Eighth Amendment. In support of his two ineffective-assistance-of-

counsel claims, Williams submitted the affidavit of his girlfriend who attested that

mother’s boyfriend attended the victims’ birthday party in July 2013, as well as a

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                  OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS

document from an offender-registration website indicating that mother’s boyfriend

was a registered sex offender, and the affidavit of Williams’s case manager at Talbert

House, who attested that he had assisted Williams in “filling out visitation forms for

Warren and Hamilton Counties” and that Williams “sought assistance with

completing a custody packet” in October 2014.

       {¶4}    The trial court summarily denied the petition.

       {¶5}    Two years later, in December 2019, Williams filed a successive petition

for postconviction relief. In his first three grounds for relief, he asserts that his trial

counsel was ineffective for (1) failing to call mother’s boyfriend as a witness; (2) failing

to allow Williams to direct his own defense; and (3) providing “erroneous legal advice”

with respect to the state’s plea offer. In his fourth ground for relief, he argues that the

trial court lacked subject-matter jurisdiction over his felony trial.

       {¶6}    With respect to the first three grounds for relief, Williams argues that

he only rejected the state’s plea offer because his trial counsel had promised that he

would call mother’s boyfriend as a witness at trial. In support of these claims, Williams

submits the affidavits of his girlfriend and mother, both of whom attested that trial

counsel was supposed to call mother’s boyfriend as a witness. Williams’s girlfriend

also testified that trial counsel had pressured Williams to accept the state’s plea offer.

       {¶7}    The common pleas court dismissed Williams’s 2019 petition as

untimely.

       {¶8}    Bringing forth five assignments of error, Williams now appeals the

denial of his 2017 petition and the dismissal of his 2019 petition.

       No Jurisdiction to Consider 2019 Petition for Postconviction Relief

       {¶9}    Williams’s first, second, third, and fifth assignments of error address the

2019 petition and can reasonably be read together to challenge the dismissal of the

petition.

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                  OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS

       {¶10} To be timely, a postconviction petition “shall be filed no later than three

hundred sixty-five days after the date on which the trial transcript is filed in the court

of appeals in the direct appeal of the judgment of conviction or adjudication.” R.C.

2953.21(A)(2). However, a common pleas court may entertain a late postconviction

petition if it satisfies the jurisdictional requirements of R.C. 2953.23. The petitioner

must show either that he was unavoidably prevented from discovering the facts upon

which the postconviction claims depend, or that the postconviction claims are

predicated upon a new and retrospectively applicable right recognized by the United

States Supreme Court since the time for filing the petition had expired.             R.C.

2953.23(A)(1)(a). And the petitioner must show “by clear and convincing evidence

that, but for constitutional error at trial, no reasonable factfinder would have found

the petitioner guilty of the offense of which the petitioner was convicted * * *.” R.C.

2953.23(A)(1)(b). If the petitioner does not satisfy those jurisdictional requirements,

the petition is subject to dismissal without a hearing. See R.C. 2953.21(D) and (F) and

2953.23(A). Additionally, a trial court is not required to issue findings of fact and

conclusions of law when dismissing an untimely or successive petition for

postconviction relief. State ex rel. Kimbrough v. Greene, 98 Ohio St.3d 116, 2002-

Ohio-7042, 781 N.E.2d 155, ¶ 6.

       {¶11} Here, the trial transcript was filed in Williams’s direct appeal on August

8, 2016. A supplemental transcript was filed on September 6, 2016, which transcribed

several pretrial hearings. Even if we use the later date of September 6, 2016, to reflect

the filing of the transcript in the direct appeal, Williams’s successive petition filed in

September 2019 was beyond the 365-day period and thus, untimely.

       {¶12} Williams argues that even though his petition was untimely, the court

had subject-matter jurisdiction to consider his petition under R.C. 2953.23. He

contends that he was unavoidably prevented from discovering the facts on which his

postconviction claims depend because his appellate counsel had failed to turn over

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                  OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS

Williams’s case file until recently. But Williams did not need to access his case file to

discover the facts upon which his postconviction claims depended. According to his

own argument, he had rejected the state’s plea offer solely based on his trial counsel’s

alleged guarantee that mother’s boyfriend would testify at trial. And, at the time the

jury returned its verdict in 2016 finding Williams guilty of the charged offenses,

Williams knew that mother’s boyfriend had not testified at his trial. Thus, Williams

was aware of the facts underlying his claims for ineffective assistance of counsel well

within the time period necessary to file a timely petition for postconviction relief.

       {¶13} Because Williams has not demonstrated that he had been unavoidably

prevented from discovering the facts upon which his postconviction claims depend

and does not argue that his claims are based on a new right recognized by the United

States Supreme Court, Williams has not met the jurisdictional requirements of R.C.

2953.23. Accordingly, we hold that the common pleas court did not have subject-

matter jurisdiction to consider the merits of the 2019 postconviction petition and

properly dismissed it.

       {¶14} With respect to Williams’s fourth claim that the trial court lacked

subject-matter jurisdiction over his felony trial, we recognize that a defendant may

raise a challenge to a trial court’s jurisdiction at any time. See Dikong v. Ohio

Supports, Inc., 2013-Ohio-33, 98 N.E.2d 949, ¶ 9 (1st Dist.). However, Williams chose

to raise this challenge in an untimely postconviction petition, which we have held was

properly dismissed. But even if the court could have considered Williams’s claim, it

would have been properly denied because a common pleas court has subject-matter

jurisdiction over felony offenses. See Article IV, Section 4(A), Ohio Constitution; R.C.

2931.03; State v. Harper, 160 Ohio St.3d 480, 2020-Ohio-2913, 159 N.E.3d 248, ¶ 25,

quoting Smith v. Sheldon, 157 Ohio St.3d 1, 2019-Ohio-1677, 131 N.E.3d 1, ¶ 8 (“[A]

common pleas court has subject-matter jurisdiction over felony cases.”).

       {¶15} The first, second, third, and fifth assignments of error are overruled.

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                  OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS

                             2017 Petition Properly Denied

       {¶16} In his fourth assignment of error, Williams contends that “the trial court

abused its discretion when it did not * * * make a timely judgment and service of

judgment.” Under this assignment, Williams appears to be arguing that he was denied

the opportunity to exercise his right to appeal the denial of his 2017 petition. While

the record demonstrates that he was not served with a copy of the judgment entry

denying his 2017 petition as required by Civ.R 58(B), the lack of prompt service in this

case did not prevent him from appealing the court’s judgment denying his 2017

petition. The record demonstrates that on June 21, 2023, Williams filed a notice of

appeal from the denial of his 2017 petition, which this court accepted as timely-filed.

See State v. Young, 1st Dist. Hamilton No. C-140236, 2015-Ohio-774, ¶ 4 (recognizing

that a petition for postconviction relief is civil in nature and where the denial of a

petition is not served within the three-day period required under Civ.R. 58(B), the

time to file an appeal is tolled until service is complete). Because Williams was aware

of the denial of his petition and then filed a notice of appeal from that judgment, we

cannot say that the trial court’s failure to promptly serve him with the judgment entry

prevented Williams from exercising his right to appeal.

       {¶17} Williams has not raised any other challenges to the denial of his 2017
petition except to generally argue that it was timely and meritorious. Even if we accept

Williams’s argument that his petition was timely filed using the date that the

supplemental transcripts were filed in his direct appeal, we cannot say, after a

complete review of the record, that the lower court abused its discretion denying the

petition where the postconviction claims were either barred by law or lacked merit.

With respect to Williams’s claim asserting a due-process challenge to his bail and

indictment, we note that a challenge to pretrial bail is moot following a conviction, see

State v. Hughbanks, 99 Ohio St.3d 365, 2003-Ohio-4121, 792 N.E.2d 1081, ¶ 35, and

that a defendant may not collaterally attack his or her conviction based on a defective

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                  OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS

indictment, see State v. Reed, 2d Dist. Clark No. 2021-CA-59, 2022-Ohio-3461, ¶ 21.

Additionally, Williams’s challenge to his sentences is barred by res judicata, as that

challenge was previously litigated in his direct appeal. See generally State v. Perry,

10 Ohio St.2d 175, 180, 226 N.E.2d 104 (1967).

       {¶18} Finally, with respect to his ineffective-assistance-of-counsel claims,

Williams did not present substantive grounds for relief. The evidence he submitted in

support of his claims did not demonstrate that trial counsel’s performance was

deficient or that Williams was prejudiced by trial counsel’s decision to refrain from

calling mother’s boyfriend as a witness or investigating mother’s timing in reporting

the abuse where counsel chose to rely on his cross-examination of mother at trial to

explore these issues. Additionally, none of the evidence submitted with Williams’s

2017 petition contradicted mother’s trial testimony that she had dated a man who was

required to register as a sex offender, but had not been dating him during the time the

charged offenses occurred, nor did it contradict her testimony that Williams had not

filed a motion or petition seeking visitation or custody of the children with any court

and thus, she did not know of his plans, and that prior to learning of the abuse, mother

was the one who had initiated and encouraged visitation between Williams and the

children.

       {¶19} Because Williams was not prevented from appealing the denial of his

2017 petition and because his petition was properly denied, we overrule the fourth

assignment of error.

       {¶20} Having overruled all five assignments of error, we affirm the judgments

of the common pleas court.

                                                                  Judgments affirmed.

WINKLER and KINSLEY, JJ., concur.

Please note:

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          OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS

The court has recorded its own entry on the date of the release of this opinion.

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