State v. Feltha

Citations

• 2017 Ohio 8640

Syllabus

MURDER - WEAPONS UNDER DISABILITY - EVIDENCE - COUNSEL - PRIOR ADJUDICATIONS - JURY INSTRUCTIONS - LESSER INCLUDED OFFENSE - AUTHENTICATION: Counsel was not ineffective for failing to seek the severance of a weapons-under-disability charge from a murder charge for trial where the evidence for each offense was simple and direct so that the jury was capable of segregating the proof required for each offense. Counsel was not ineffective for failing to request that a weapons-under-disability charge be tried to the court where such a decision is within the realm of trial strategy. Defendant did not establish that his counsel was ineffective for failing to have him plead guilty to a weapons-under-disability charge where the record failed to demonstrate that defendant would have been willing to plead guilty to the charge. While counsel may have been ineffective for allowing the details of defendant's three prior juvenile adjudications to be admitted into evidence rather than offering to stipulate to the fact of one prior adjudication for the purposes of a weapons-under-disability charge, the evidence of defendant's guilt was so overwhelming that there was no reasonable probability that the result of the trial was affected. The discussion of defendant's prior adjudications during defense counsel's opening statement was sound trial strategy and did not amount to ineffective assistance of counsel. The decision of trial counsel to change strategy from claiming that defendant had not committed the shooting to claiming that he had shot the victim accidentally was not ineffective assistance where counsel's strategy changed due to the way the evidence was developed at trial. Counsel was not ineffective for failing to file a motion to suppress the statement defendant made to police because such a motion would have been denied. Counsel's concession that defendant committed the weapons-under-disability offense was not ineffective assistance where his conviction was a foregone conclus