State v. McAllister

372 N.E.2d 1341, 53 Ohio App. 2d 176, 7 Ohio Op. 3d 247, 1977 Ohio App. LEXIS 6984
CourtOhio Court of Appeals
DecidedSeptember 1, 1977
Docket36114
StatusPublished
Cited by25 cases

This text of 372 N.E.2d 1341 (State v. McAllister) 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. McAllister, 372 N.E.2d 1341, 53 Ohio App. 2d 176, 7 Ohio Op. 3d 247, 1977 Ohio App. LEXIS 6984 (Ohio Ct. App. 1977).

Opinion

Parrino, J.

Appellant Randy McAllister was indicted for grand theft on November 18, 1974. On January 17, 1975, he appeared before the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court and entered a plea of no contest to the charge *177 against him. The court then found appellant guilty of the offense charged. The case was referred to the probation department for a presentence investigation and report. A personal bond of $1,000 was set.

"When appellant subsequently failed to appear in court, his bond was forfeited and a capias was issued. The docket shows that on December 1, 1975, appellant was taken into custody and the capias was returned. The bond forfeiture and capias were vacated four days later.

On December 30, 1975, the court granted a motion made by appellant to set aside his previously entered plea of no contest. The case was then set for trial on February 4, 1976. However, the prosecutor was unavailable on that date, and the trial was postponed until February 11. On February 12, 1976, the jury returned a verdict of guilty.

Appellant has brought this appeal from his conviction, and has presented four assignments of error for our review.

In his first assignment of error appellant asserts that the court erred in not granting a motion for dismissal based upon R. C. 2945.71 et seq., the speedy trial statutes. We find no merit in this assignment of error.

R. C. 2945.71 provides that a defendant charged with a felony offense must be tried within 270 days of the date of his arrest, with each day during which the accused is held in jail in lieu of bail on the pending charge to be counted as three days.

On the day trial was to commence, appellant made an oral motion to discharge for failure to comply with this provision. During the voir dire hearing on the-motion, defense counsel alleged that appellant had spent in excess of 90 days in jail since the time of Ms original arrest for the charge involved in this case. Counting each day in jail as three under R. C. 2945.71(D), he alleged that the statutory time for trial had been exceeded. Counsel argued that some of the days spent. in jail elapsed before the no contest plea was taken, and some had elapsed after the plea was. vacated following appellant’s re-arrest on the capias.

*178 Assuming the truth of the allegations, * we are convinced that appellant was not denied his statutory right to a speedy trial. In State v. Gettys (1976), 49 Ohio App. 2d 241, the Court of Appeals for Seneca County held that the requirements of R. C. 2945.71 et seq., pertaining to time for trial, have no application to the time for trial of a cause in which an original conviction has been reversed and the matter remanded for retrial. We find the reasoning of that ease persuasive.

We perceive no difference for purposes of the statute between a retrial following a reversal of a conviction and a trial following the vacation of a conviction based on a no contest plea, as occurred in this case. The provisions of Ohio’s speedy trial statutes, R. C. 2945.71 et seq., are directed solely to an original trial following the arrest of a defendant, and have no application to the time within which a defendant must be tried following the vacation of a no contest plea on his own motion.

In this case, appellant was first arrested on October 16, 1974. He entered his plea of no contest on January 17, 1975, or 93 days after the date of his arrest. Appellant has alleged in his brief that he spent 52 days in jail during that period. Assuming that this is true, and giving each day in jail a triple count, only 156 speedy trial days would have elapsed before the no contest plea was entered. Thus, his no contest plea was timely taken within the speedy trial statutes. Appellant’s rights under R. C. 2945.-71 et seq., were fulfilled at that point. Following the vacation of the no contest plea, the statutory time limit did not apply.

In the absence of a controlling statutory time period, *179 the only limitations on the time within which appellant had to be brought to trial following the vacation of the no contest plea were the constitutional requirements of the Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Section 10, Article I, of the Ohio Constitution. Barker v. Wingo (1972), 407 U. S. 514; State v. Gettys, supra; State v. Bound (1975), 43 Ohio App. 2d 44. In light of the fact that only 43 days elapsed between the withdrawal of appellant’s no contest plea and his subsequent trial, we find no constitutional violation. We conclude that appellant was timely brought to trial, and that the court properly overruled the motion to discharge.

. The remaining assignments of error are:

“II. The Jury verdict is not sustained by sufficient evidence and it is contrary to law.
“III. The Trial Court errored [sic] in not granting the Defendant-Appellant’s motion for acquittal based upon the evidence.
“IV. The Trial Court errored [sic] in its charge to the jury.”

The assignments of error present generally related issues, and we will treat them together.

The record in this case shows that at about 12:45 a. m. on October 16, 1974, Patrolman Michael Frich and Patrolman Stephen Stropko were riding in their police car on East 130th Street. They turned on to Abell Avenue, and shortly thereafter observed a 1968 Thunderbird run through a red light at the intersection of Abell and East 130th. The officers gave chase. The driver of the Thunderbird apparently lost control of the vehicle, and it crashed into a house. The driver’s side door opened and a man exited, tripped and fell. A second man exited through the same door and ran away. The first man crawled underneath the car. Patrolman Frich arrested the first man out of the car. This man was later identified as the appellant. The original ignition had been removed from the Thunderbird, and a second ignition had been installed. The serial number of the Thunderbird was determined to be 8483N122286.

*180 The record further shows that on the evening of October 15, 1974, Mrs. Ruth Scholz and her son John went to Richmond Mall and parked Mrs. Scholz’s 1968 Thunderbird in the parking lot. After shopping, they discovered that the car was missing from the parking lot. The serial number of Mrs. Scholz’s Thunderbird was 8483N122286, the same as that of the car in which appellant was found a few hours, later. Although Mrs. Scholz did not testify, her husband and her son testified that, to their knowledge, she had not-given permission to anyone to drive the car on the date in question.

Appellant did not testify at the trial. Nor did he present any evidence which would tend to explain his presence in Mrs. Scholz’s car only hours after it was taken from the Richmond Mall.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
372 N.E.2d 1341, 53 Ohio App. 2d 176, 7 Ohio Op. 3d 247, 1977 Ohio App. LEXIS 6984, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-v-mcallister-ohioctapp-1977.