State v. Yoder

2026 Ohio 196

• Court: Ohio Court of Appeals
• Decided: January 22, 2026
• Docket: 25CA0022
• Status: Published

Opinion

[Cite as State v. Yoder, 2026-Ohio-196.]

COURT OF APPEALS COSHOCTON COUNTY, OHIO FIFTH APPELLATE DISTRICT

STATE OF OHIO, Case No. 25CA0022

Plaintiff - Appellee Opinion & Judgment Entry

-vs- Appeal from the Court of Common Pleas of Coshocton County, MARVIN L. YODER, Case No. 23CR0074

Defendant - Appellant Judgment: Affirmed

Date of Judgment: January 22, 2026

BEFORE: Craig R. Baldwin; Robert G. Montgomery; David M. Gormley, Judges

APPEARANCES: Benjamin E. Hall, Coshocton County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Coshocton, Ohio, for Plaintiff-Appellee; Marvin L. Yoder, Caldwell, Ohio, briefed the case on his own behalf as Defendant-Appellant.

Gormley, J.

{¶1} More than a year and a half after he was sentenced on a felony drug charge,

appellant Marvin Yoder filed in the trial court a motion asking that court to “correct” the

sentencing entry. Because Yoder’s motion in fact asked the trial court to substantively

alter his sentence, his request for a corrected or “nunc pro tunc” sentencing entry was not

a proper one. We affirm the trial court’s decision denying Yoder’s motion.

The Key Facts

{¶2} Yoder pled guilty in the trial court to an aggravated-possession-of-drugs

charge, and he was sentenced for that second-degree-felony offense in December 2023.

As R.C. 2925.11(C)(1)(c) requires, Yoder was sentenced to a mandatory indefinite prison term. (The charge to which he pled guilty alleged that he had possessed at least five

times the bulk amount of methamphetamine.)

{¶3} In accordance with R.C. 2929.19(B)(2)(c)(i), the trial court at the December

2023 sentencing hearing advised Yoder about Ohio’s so-called Reagan Tokes Law and

explained to him the law’s rebuttable presumption under which he — in the words of that

statute — “will be released from service of the sentence on the expiration of the minimum

prison term imposed as part of the sentence.” Yoder’s sentencing entry also notes that

the trial court advised him at the sentencing hearing that “he is not eligible for an earned

early release date due to the sentence . . . being a mandatory sentence.”

{¶4} In August 2025, Yoder filed a motion asking the trial court to “correct” the

sentencing entry. According to Yoder’s motion, the trial court should have advised him

at sentencing that, while serving his prison term, he could be considered for what R.C.

2967.271(F)(1) describes as “a reduction” in his “minimum prison term . . . due to . . . [his]

exceptional conduct while incarcerated.”

{¶5} Reiterating that Yoder is serving a mandatory prison term, the trial court

denied Yoder’s motion. Yoder now appeals.

Yoder’s Motion Sought Not a Clerical Correction But Instead a Substantive Change in His Sentence

{¶6} Crim.R. 36 provides that “[c]lerical mistakes in judgments, orders, or other

parts of the record arising from oversight or omission, may be corrected by the court at

any time.” A clerical mistake is “a mistake or omission, mechanical in nature and apparent

on the record, which does not involve a legal decision or judgment.” State v. Miller, 2010-

Ohio-5705, ¶ 15. Aside from making those kinds of changes, though, a trial court lacks the authority to reconsider its own valid and final judgment, with one exception: when the

sentence imposed is void. Id. at ¶ 14.

{¶7} Though Yoder labeled his motion as a request to “correct” the sentencing

entry, the motion itself asked the trial court to find that he is eligible to be considered for

a reduction in his minimum prison term if he engages in what R.C. 2967.271(F)(1)

describes as “exceptional conduct while incarcerated.” (The Ohio Department of

Rehabilitation and Correction has in turn defined that term as “behavior which is unusually

good and demonstrates a level of excellence not commonly displayed by an incarcerated

adult,” and various ways in which a prison inmate might “demonstrate exceptional

conduct” are then listed in the same regulation. See Adm.Code 5120-2-19(B)(3).)

{¶8} Yoder’s request that his sentence and the sentencing entry be changed in

that way flies in the face of what the trial judge decided in December 2023: that — as the

December 2023 entry said — Yoder “is not eligible” for the minimum-sentence reduction

that he seeks. In short, his motion did not ask for a clerical-error correction but instead

asked that the trial court shift from holding that a prison inmate serving a mandatory prison

term is not eligible for any shortening of a court-imposed minimum prison term to Yoder’s

view that such a prisoner is in fact eligible for the kind of exceptional-conduct reduction in

a minimum prison term that R.C. 2967.271(F)(1) describes.

{¶9} That kind of change would require the trial court to alter a legal decision

made by the judge at sentencing, and it would go well beyond the leeway that Crim.R. 36

gives to courts to fix clerical mistakes. See State v. Richmond, 2025-Ohio-1076, ¶ 14

(5th Dist.) (“’nunc pro tunc’ entries are limited in proper use to reflecting what the court in

fact decided, not what it might or should have decided or even what the court intended to decide”); State v. Thompson, 2024-Ohio-5011, ¶ 8 (10th Dist.) (holding that a

“[d]etermination of whether R.C. 2929.13(F) applied to Thompson’s offenses is a

substantive legal decision,” and explaining that a trial court’s finding about the mandatory

nature of a sentence “is not the type of clerical mistake that a trial court can correct

through a nunc pro tunc decision”); State v. Vera-Lopez, 2024-Ohio-4971, ¶ 8 (11th Dist.)

(“a nunc pro tunc entry is inappropriate when it reflects a substantive change in the

judgment”).

{¶10} Because Yoder’s motion was not a proper one under Crim.R. 36, the trial

court rightly denied it.

{¶11} The judgment of the Court of Common Pleas of Coshocton County is

affirmed. Costs are to be paid by Appellant Marvin Yoder.

By: Gormley, J.;

Baldwin, P.J. and

Montgomery, J. concur.