State v. Shingleton

Citations

• 204 N.E.3d 1214
• 2022 Ohio 4740

Syllabus

The trial court did not err in rejecting appellant's claim that the violent offender registration scheme in Sierah's Law was unconstitutionally retroactive as applied to him. Appellant failed to distinguish his \as-applied\ claim from a facial retroactivity challenge that the Supreme Court of Ohio had already rejected in State v. Hubbard, 167 Ohio St.3d 77, 2021-Ohio-3710, 189 N.E.3d 720. Further, appellant waived his ex post facto claim by failing to assert it in the trial court. In this regard, there was no plain error or any error, as the Ex Post Facto Clause only applies to criminal cases. Here, while appellant's motion seeking to avoid registration in the violent offender database was brought in his criminal case (which ended many years earlier), the violent offender registration scheme is remedial and civil, not criminal. The trial court did err in failing to consider appellant's due process and equal protection claims, but the error was not prejudicial. First, appellant's due process argument is simply an attempt to reframe the retroactivity argument that has already been rejected. Second, in an offender registration situation, the Supreme Court of Ohio had previously rejected the same equal protection argument that appellant is making. In addition, appellant has not offered any reasons why the legislature acted irrationally in enacting Sierah's Law, nor has he explained how the government lacked a legitimate purpose by distinguishing between violent offenders who were imprisoned at the time the legislation was effective and those who had been released from prison. Judgment affirmed.