State v. Bahns

925 N.E.2d 1025, 185 Ohio App. 3d 805
CourtOhio Court of Appeals
DecidedOctober 16, 2009
DocketNo. 22922
StatusPublished
Cited by23 cases

This text of 925 N.E.2d 1025 (State v. Bahns) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Ohio Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State v. Bahns, 925 N.E.2d 1025, 185 Ohio App. 3d 805 (Ohio Ct. App. 2009).

Opinion

Donovan, Presiding Judge.

{¶ 1} Defendant-appellant, Todd A. Bahns, appeals his conviction and sentence for one count of using deception to obtain drugs, in violation of R.C. 2925.22(A), a felony of the fourth degree.

{¶ 2} On September 6, 2007, Bahns was charged by indictment with one count of using deception to obtain drugs. At his arraignment on September 20, 2007, Bahns waived the reading of the indictment and pleaded not guilty to the charged offense. On October 25, 2007, Bahns filed a motion to suppress incriminating statements that he made to hospital security personnel; however, four days later on October 29, 2007, Bahns withdrew the motion.

[808]*808{¶ 3} A bench trial was held on June 2 and 3, 2008, after which the court directed the parties to file posttrial memoranda regarding specific issues raised during the trial. In a decision and entry filed on July 10, 2008, the trial court found Bahns guilty of the charged offense. The trial court subsequently sentenced Bahns to five years of community control and suspended his driver’s license for six months. Bahns filed a timely notice of appeal with this court on September 3, 2008.

I

{¶ 4} Bahns was employed as a registered nurse assigned to the advanced-care unit (“ACU”) at the Miami Valley Hospital (“MVH”) from July 2000 until May 16, 2007, when his employment was terminated for allegedly stealing morphine from the hospital for his own personal use. Bahns’s theft of the morphine formed the basis of the criminal charge at issue in the instant case.

{¶ 5} The theft was uncovered after an investigation was conducted by Danielle Roberts, an associate nurse manager at MVH, who supervised Bahns. Roberts began her investigation after she became aware of alleged negligent behavior by Bahns in the care of one of his assigned patients. During her investigation, Roberts noted certain suspicious inconsistencies between Bahns’s personal documentation of medication that he administered to patients and the computerized reports generated by PYXIS, the machine that contained and dispensed various medications for patients in the hospital. Each floor of the hospital where patients were located contained its own PYXIS machine for use by the nurses who administered the medication.

{¶ 6} Access to the PYXIS machine was carefully monitored, and each transaction was recorded. A nurse using PYXIS was first required to enter his or her user number, as well as a fingerprint, for identification purposes. After initial access was granted, the nurse was required to enter the patient’s name and then choose whether to withdraw, return, or dispose of medication.

{¶ 7} The PYXIS machine generated a report for each nurse that contained the following information: (1) the specific station from which the medication was dispensed, (2) the transaction date and time, (3) patient type, (4) medication name, (5) Med. Att. ID, (6) amount of medication withdrawn, and (7) the patient’s name.

{¶ 8} When medication was withdrawn from PYXIS for a specific patient, the nurse was required to document that the medication was administered in the medical-administration-record (“MAR”) portion of the patient’s chart. Documentation on MAR was to be performed immediately after administration of the medication. If the nurse did not document administration of the medication on [809]*809MAR, it was assumed that the medication had not been given to the patient. Testimony was adduced during the trial that because of the chaotic and stressful nature of the job, a nurse would sometimes forget to properly document that medication had been administered to a particular patient in his or her MAR report.

{¶ 9} Roberts’s investigation concentrated on Bahns’s behavior between January 1, 2007, and February 5, 2007. Roberts’s investigation established that Bahns’s PYXIS report demonstrated that he had withdrawn morphine on January 18, 2007, and January 19, 2007, to be administered to patient S.R. Roberts noted, however, that when she compared Bahns’s PYXIS report to S.R.’s MAR, there was no documentation made that the morphine was ever administered to S.R. on either date. Roberts’s investigation of Bahns’s PYXIS report also uncovered several other instances in which Bahns failed to document the administration of medications to various other patients in their MARs, as well as instances in which Bahns withdrew medication from the PYXIS dispenser without first obtaining an order from a doctor to do so.

{¶ 10} After Roberts reported the results of her investigation to her superiors, Bahns was placed on investigatory suspension on May 5, 2007. On May 16, 2007, Bahns was called to a meeting to discuss the discrepancies between his PYXIS report and the patients’ MARs. At the meeting were Roberts, nurse manager Patricia Burnett, human-resources representative Gretchen Long, and security-operations manager LaMark Davis. Davis began the meeting by reading Bahns his Miranda warnings. Bahns waived his rights and was immediately shown evidence of the discrepancies. Davis then asked Bahns whether he had been stealing medication. Bahns did not answer the question but rather got up from his chair, walked a short distance, and fainted. Bahns was subsequently taken to the emergency room in the hospital for treatment.

{¶ 11} After Bahns was released from the ER, the questioning resumed. Eventually, Bahns admitted to the group that he had taken the medication for himself. After making a verbal confession, Bahns also provided a written statement in which he confessed that he “need[ed] help,” and that he “[had] been diverting drugs.” Initially, Bahns wrote, “I have been accused of diverting drugs,” in his statement, but later crossed out the words “accused of’ so that his written statement would fully comport with his verbal admission to stealing the morphine. Bahns’s employment at MVH was immediately terminated, and he was later charged.

{¶ 12} Bahns testified on his own behalf during trial, claiming that his verbal and written statements were not voluntary. Bahns testified that he did not recall making any admissions at the meeting regarding whether he was taking the medication for his own use. Bahns maintained that he confessed to diverting the [810]*810medication only because he wanted to avoid further questioning. Bahns further testified that his written statement was coached by Davis.

{¶ 13} After a bench trial, Bahns was convicted of one count of using deception to obtain drugs and sentenced accordingly. It is from this judgment that Bahns now appeals.

II

{¶ 14} Bahns’s first assignment of error is as follows:

{¶ 15} “The trial court erred in basing its finding of guilt on inadmissible hearsay evidence.”

{¶ 16} In his first assignment, Bahns contends that Roberts’s testimony concerning her investigation into the discrepancies between Bahns’s PYXIS report and the MARs was inadmissible because the MARs documents were not introduced as evidence during the trial. Since Roberts’s testimony was based upon inadmissible hearsay, Bahns argues that the trial court should not have considered it when it found him guilty of the charged offense.

{¶ 17} Bahns does not dispute that since no opinions or statements were contained in the MARs, those documents are nontestimonial. Thus, the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Crawford, v. Washington (2004), 541 U.S. 36, 124 S.Ct.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
925 N.E.2d 1025, 185 Ohio App. 3d 805, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-bahns-ohioctapp-2009.