State v. Smith

Citations

• 2019 Ohio 3642

Syllabus

MOTION TO WITHDRAW PLEA—JURISDICTION— HEARING—COUNSEL—WEAPONS UNDER DISABILITY: The common pleas court had jurisdiction to decide defendant's Crim.R. 32.1 motion to withdraw his no-contest pleas after his convictions based on those pleas had been affirmed on direct appeal, when his ineffective-counsel claim depended for its resolution upon evidence outside the record of the proceedings leading to his convictions and thus could not have been raised on direct appeal. The common pleas court did not abuse its discretion in denying without a hearing relief under Crim.R. 32.1 based on defendant's ineffective-counsel claims concerning his jury waiver and the sufficiency of the evidence to support his weapons-under-disability conviction: an assignment of error challenging the validity of his jury waiver was overruled in his direct appeal and using his prior juvenile adjudication to prove his weapons-under-disability offense did not violate the due-process guarantees of the state or federal constitution. The common pleas court abused its discretion in denying relief under Crim.R. 32.1 without first conducting an evidentiary hearing on defendant's claim in his motion that his trial counsel's drug addiction had rendered him incapable of functioning as the counsel guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution: the motion, on its face, as supported by defendant's and counsel's affidavits, demonstrated substantive grounds for relief the claim was not wholly disproved by the record and the court could not have wholly discounted the credibility of those affidavits.