State v. Shelton

2018 Ohio 3895
Ohio Court of Appeals·Decided September 26, 2018·No. C-170547·Published·Cited by 11 cases

Opinion

IN THE COURT OF APPEALS

FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT OF OHIO HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO

STATE OF OHIO, : APPEAL NO. C-170547 TRIAL NO. B-1607181

Plaintiff-Appellee, :

O P I N I O N.

vs. :

DAVET SHELTON, :

Defendant-Appellant. :

Criminal Appeal From: Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas

Judgment Appealed From Is: Affirmed in Part, Sentences Vacated in Part, and Cause Remanded

Date of Judgment Entry on Appeal: September 26, 2018

Joseph T. Deters, Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney, and Scott M. Heenan, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for Plaintiff-Appellee,

Raymond T. Faller, Hamilton County Public Defender, and David Hoffmann, Assistant Public Defender, for Defendant-Appellant.

MYERS, Judge.

{¶1} Defendant-appellant Davet Shelton has appealed from the trial court’s entry convicting him, following a jury trial, of aggravated robbery, felonious assault, and theft from an elderly person and sentencing him to an aggregate term of 20 years’ imprisonment.

{¶2} In five assignments of error, Shelton argues that the trial court erred by failing to grant his motion for a continuance, that the trial court admitted evidence in violation of Evid.R. 404(B), that the trial court erred in allowing the victim to make an in-court identification, that his convictions were not supported by sufficient evidence and were against the manifest weight of the evidence, and that the trial court violated R.C. 2941.25 by imposing multiple sentences on allied offenses of similar import.

{¶3} Because the offenses of aggravated robbery and theft from an elderly person were allied offenses of similar import, we find that the trial court erred by imposing separate sentences for each offense. But the judgment of the trial court is otherwise affirmed.

Factual Background

{¶4} On June 24, 2016, 87-year-old James Hayes was attacked and robbed in the parking lot of a LaRosa’s restaurant in the Corryville area. A grand jury returned an indictment charging Shelton with the following offenses relating to the attack on Hayes: five counts of aggravated robbery, four counts of felonious assault, one count of theft from an elderly person, and two counts of theft.

{¶5} The following evidence was adduced at the jury trial. Hayes testified that on the date of the offenses, he was scheduled to work at the LaRosa’s in Corryville. He arrived in his white Hyundai and parked in front of the restaurant at approximately 3:30 a.m. to meet a delivery truck. Surveillance videos taken from neighboring businesses show that while Hayes sat in his parked car, a blue Nissan drove past him two times and then parked across the street from him. An African- American male wearing black pants, a white tank top, a ball cap, and a white towel draped around his neck exited from the blue Nissan and walked past Hayes’s car before returning to the vehicle and driving away. The blue Nissan drove past Hayes’s vehicle for a third time just minutes later.

{¶6} The surveillance videos then show a similarly dressed African-

American male walk up from behind Hayes’s car and stand next to it for a moment before walking away. The person in the video was wearing a black shirt or sweatshirt, but still had a white towel draped around his neck.

{¶7} A short while later, the videos show an African-American male wearing black pants, a black sweatshirt, and a red ball cap, walk up and stand next to Hayes’s car for a period of time. This person was carrying what appeared to be a red gasoline container.

{¶8} Hayes testified that he did not remember seeing the blue Nissan drive by, but that he did recall an individual standing next to his car for several minutes. When the delivery truck arrived, Hayes drove his car to the lot behind the restaurant, where he was attacked. The attack on Hayes was captured on a security camera, and it shows that an African-American male, wearing black pants and a black sweatshirt, and carrying a red gasoline container, approached Hayes just after he exited from his

vehicle. The assailant threw two rocks at Hayes and his vehicle, one of which broke a rear window on the car. He then struck Hayes on his back with a brick, knocking Hayes to the ground. While Hayes was on the ground, the assailant used Hayes’s cane to beat him, punched him in the face, rifled through his pockets, and drove away in Hayes’s car.

{¶9} Hayes provided an inventory of the items that had been in his stolen car, including a pool stick, bowling balls, a chair, CDs, a vacuum, and jumper cables. His wallet was also stolen from his person. Hayes suffered much bruising on his back and missed several days of work because of the pain. While testifying, he identified Shelton as his assailant.

{¶10} Hayes’s vehicle was recovered from a nearby street the following day.

A mask and a Swisher Sweets cigar wrapper were found in the vehicle. Hayes testified that these items did not belong to him.

{¶11} A palm print belonging to Don August Kemper was found on Hayes’s car. Cincinnati Police Officer Christopher Bihl, who had investigated these crimes, testified that he had interviewed Kemper and that Kemper was too large to be the person on the surveillance video. Kemper told the police that someone named “David” had picked him up in a white car and driven him around. After speaking with Kemper’s mother Denise Arnold, Officer Bihl determined that Shelton was the “David” referenced by Kemper.

{¶12} Both Kemper and Arnold testified at trial. Arnold explained that Shelton lived next door to her, and that Kemper had always called him “David,” instead of “Davet.” Kemper testified that Shelton picked him up one morning in a white car. Kemper admitted that he had previously told the police that Shelton had

taken the car from a man who he had “[gotten] into it with” and then knocked out. After they drove around in the stolen car, Shelton parked the car and left Kemper sitting in it. Shelton later returned driving a blue car, which he used to take Kemper home.

{¶13} Several weeks after the attack on Hayes, following a police pursuit, Shelton was stopped while driving a blue Nissan with North Carolina license plates numbered DHD4542. Inside the car, officers discovered Swisher Sweets wrappers, a red hat similar to the hat worn in the surveillance video, a white towel, a Scarface t- shirt, CDs belonging to Hayes, a Dirt Devil vacuum, a chair, and bullets. A personalized license plate from Hayes’s car was also found in the blue Nissan.

{¶14} During a search of Shelton’s apartment, officers found a pool stick, boxes of ammunition, shotgun shells, and a Swisher Sweets cigar wrapper. In the basement storage unit assigned to Shelton, officers found a red gas container and a red bag containing jumper cables. Officer Bihl testified that both the blue Nissan and Shelton’s apartment were cluttered and had items scattered everywhere.

{¶15} Officer Bihl searched Shelton’s Facebook page, where he found various pictures that collectively depicted Shelton with a cigar in his mouth, Shelton wearing a towel around his neck, and Shelton wearing a Scarface t-shirt similar to the shirt found during the search of the blue Nissan.

{¶16} Precious Wright, Shelton’s former girlfriend, testified that she had rented a blue Nissan Sentra with a North Caroline license plate numbered DHD4542 for Shelton to drive. She was unaware if Shelton allowed anyone else to drive the car.

{¶17} Joan Burke, a serologist with the Hamilton County Coroner’s laboratory, testified that she found Shelton’s DNA on both a mask and a Swisher Sweets cigar wrapper recovered from Hayes’s vehicle.

{¶18} Shelton presented testimony from Officer Patrick Moran, a civilian crime scene investigator with the Cincinnati Police Department. Officer Moran had received prints lifted from Hayes’s car during the investigation and had run the prints in an Automated Fingerprint Identification System (“AFIS”) database. The AFIS database returned a hit on the lifted prints, matching them to prints belonging to Kemper.

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State v. Shelton, 2018 Ohio 3895 (Ohio Ct. App. 2018).

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