State v. Harper, 101 N.E.3d 628

Jarrard Harper pled guilty in January 2016 to heroin trafficking (third-degree felony) and attempted tampering with evidence (fourth-degree felony); the court imposed community-control terms for both.
In two separate 2016 incidents Harper fled police in high-speed vehicle pursuits; each chase led to indictments charging failure to comply with an officer's signal (R.C. 2921.331(B)) with allegations that his driving caused a substantial risk of serious physical harm. One chase also produced a weapons-under-a-disability charge.
Harper pled guilty/no-contest to the new indictments and to violating his earlier community-control sanction. At sentencing the court revoked community control and imposed two-year prison terms for each count, ordering them consecutively, producing an aggregate eight-year term.
The trial court did not state on the record the R.C. 2929.14(C)(4) consecutive-sentence findings, though those findings were included in the written entries. The court also imposed a two-year sentence on the fourth-degree attempted-tampering count (which exceeded the statutory 18-month maximum).
Harper appealed, arguing (a) the attempted-tampering sentence exceeded the statutory range and (b) the court erred by imposing consecutive sentences without making the statutorily required findings at the sentencing hearing.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the two-year sentence for attempted tampering (fourth-degree) was lawful	State: Sentence imposed as part of aggregate disposition; entry lawful except as recorded	Harper: Two-year term exceeds the 18-month statutory maximum for a fourth-degree felony and is contrary to law	Court: Vacated the two-year sentence on that count; remanded for resentencing on that count only
Whether the court needed to make R.C. 2929.14(C)(4) consecutive-sentence findings at the sentencing hearing	State: Consecutive findings unnecessary because comments at hearing and written entries suffice; failure harmless	Harper: Court erred by not making required findings on the record at sentencing per Bonnell	Court: No error — because R.C. 2921.331(B)/(D) and R.C. 2929.14(C)(3) mandate consecutive service for the admitted failure-to-comply offenses that caused substantial risk, the court had no discretion and thus was not required to make R.C. 2929.14(C)(4) findings on the record

State v. Bonnell, 16 N.E.3d 659 (Ohio 2014) (requires trial courts to make and state on the record R.C. 2929.14(C)(4) findings before imposing discretionary consecutive sentences)
State v. Simmons, 19 N.E.3d 517 (Ohio 2014) (failure to make required consecutive-sentence findings at sentencing renders sentence contrary to law)