State v. Riggins

Citations

• 2019 Ohio 3254

Syllabus

AGGRAVATED MURDER – AGGRAVATED ROBBERY – EVIDENCE – BAD FAITH – HEARSAY – COUNSEL – ALLIED OFFENSES: Defendant failed to establish that the state had acted in bad faith by failing to preserve the recordings of phone calls that defendant made from the Hamilton County Justice Center where the investigating detective made repeated inquiries about obtaining the recordings and there was no evidence of why the Justice Center failed to fill the requests before the recordings were destroyed. [See CONCURRENCE: While the record does not demonstrate bad faith because we do not have information about why the Justice Center failed to act on the detective's request, the failure to preserve this important evidence in such a significant case is inexcusable.] Where the victim made a statement shortly before dying, but the record does not demonstrate that he understood that his death was imminent, his statement did not qualify as a dying declaration but the admission of the statement was not prejudicial because it did qualify as an excited utterance. Defendant's convictions for aggravated robbery and aggravated murder were based on sufficient evidence because the testimony of one of defendant's partners that they had gone out and tried to rob people and the victim's declaration that he had been robbed and shot were sufficient to establish that defendant had attempted to rob the victim prior to shooting him. Defendant's convictions for aggravated robbery and aggravated murder were not against the manifest weight of the evidence where defendant's partner testified that defendant had shot and killed the victim during a botched robbery, the vehicle defendant was in belonged to his mother, he was arrested on unrelated charges with the murder weapon, and he made a number of calls from jail that indicated he knew he was about to be charged with murder when no one had told him that was the charge they were investigating. Counsel was not ineffective for failing argue that there was no evidenc