State v. Luks, 89869 (8-7-2008)

2008 Ohio 3974
Ohio Court of Appeals·Decided August 7, 2008·No. No. 89869.·Unpublished·Cited by 4 cases

Opinion

JOURNAL ENTRY AND OPINION *Page 3
{¶ 1} Appellant Michael Luks appeals his convictions for rape, gross sexual imposition, and kidnapping. He assigns six errors for our review.1

{¶ 2} Having reviewed the record and pertinent law, we affirm Luks' convictions. The apposite facts follow.

{¶ 3} The Cuyahoga County Grand Jury indicted Luks in a 110-count indictment for rape, gross sexual imposition, and kidnapping, arising from his unlawful sexual acts with his two juvenile nieces. Luks entered a plea of not guilty; the matter proceeded to a jury trial.

Jury Trial
{¶ 4} At the time of trial, the victims were 18 and 13 years old.2 They were ten and under when the abuse occurred. Two older nieces also testified regarding Luks; however, the charges pending against Luks did not involve *Page 4 them.3 The victims testified that Luks abused them over a period of years in the home they shared with him. Luks would offer them candy in exchange for sexual acts, which consisted of him touching them and performing oral sex on them and they on him.

{¶ 5} The victims' parents are alcoholics and have ten children between them. The family was constantly moving to different states and within Ohio to escape the various child service agencies that were investigating claims of abuse and neglect of the children.

{¶ 6} In 1996, the family moved in with the paternal grandmother, where Luks also lived. Between 1996 and 1999, the family repeatedly moved to and from this house in an attempt to evade Cuyahoga County Children and Family Services ("CCDFS"), which had become involved with the family because of reports of neglect and abuse.

{¶ 7} In January 2005, the minor children were placed in their paternal aunt's custody because their parents refused to comply with the case plan developed by CCDFS. While in the aunt's custody, Victim I told her aunt that Luks had sexually abused her. The aunt refused to report the abuse to *Page 5 authorities. She also continued to allow the grandmother to babysit the children at the grandmother's house where Luks also resided.

{¶ 8} Victim I testified that she discovered Victim II's journal in which she alluded to the uncle abusing her. Victim I decided to take action to prevent further abuse of her younger siblings and called the child abuse hotline. As a result, the children were removed from their aunt's custody and placed with foster families.

{¶ 9} After presenting its case-in-chief, the State dismissed all but ten counts against Luks, consisting of four counts of rape, one count of gross sexual imposition, and three counts of kidnapping, occurring between January 24, 1996 and January 23, 1999 against Victim I; and one count each of gross sexual imposition and kidnapping against Victim II during August 2000.

{¶ 10} The jury found Luks guilty of all ten counts. The trial court sentenced Luks to four statutorily mandated life-sentences for the rape convictions, five years for the gross sexual imposition counts, and ten years for the kidnapping counts. The court ordered the rape and kidnapping counts to be served concurrently but consecutive to the five years for gross sexual imposition. The trial court also found Luks to be a habitual sex offender.

Indictment *Page 6
{¶ 11} In his first assigned error, Luks claims the indictments failed to state with specificity when the criminal acts occurred, depriving him of fair notice of the charges, and the opportunity to prepare an adequate defense. We disagree.

{¶ 12} The Ohio Supreme Court has held that "the failure to provide dates and times in an indictment will not alone provide a basis for dismissal of the charges."4 The Court explained, "a certain degree of inexactitude of averments, where they relate to matters other than the elements of the offense, is not per se impermissible or necessarily fatal to a prosecution."5 However, the State must supply specific dates and times regarding an alleged offense when it possesses such information.6

{¶ 13} This court has previously noted that the State may be unable to supply exact times and dates in cases involving victims who are young children. We explained that young children may not be able to remember exact dates, especially when the crimes involve several instances of abuse spread out over an *Page 7 extended period of time.7 In such cases, the prosecution must set forth a time frame in the indictment and charge the accused with offenses which reasonably fall within that period.8

{¶ 14} According to Victim I, the sexual abuse occurred on numerous occasions over the course of several years. There is no evidence indicating the State possessed specific dates or times the abuse occurred, or that specific dates were ascertainable, given the pervasive nature of the conduct alleged. However, the State set forth a time range of 1996 to 1999 for the crimes against Victim I. Victim II was able to estimate, based on the fact she was home for summer vacation, that the abuse against her occurred during August of 2000.

{¶ 15} Luks contends the failure to set forth a more specific time range violated his right to due process and cites to the federal Sixth Circuit case Valentine v. Konteh9 in support of his argument. The court in Valentine acknowledged that "fairly large time windows in the context of child abuse prosecutions are not in conflict with constitutional notice requirements."10 The *Page 8 court stressed the problem in that case was not "the fact that the prosecution did not provide the defendant with exact times and places. * * * Instead, the problem is that within each set of 20 counts, there are absolutely no distinctions made."11

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State v. Luks, 89869 (8-7-2008), 2008 Ohio 3974 (Ohio Ct. App. 2008).

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