State v. Soto (Slip Opinion), 2019 Ohio 4430

In 2006, two-year-old Julio Soto died; Travis Soto was indicted for involuntary manslaughter and child endangering based on his accounts of an ATV accident.
Soto pleaded guilty to child endangering under a negotiated plea; the involuntary-manslaughter count was dismissed and Soto was sentenced and served five years.
In 2016 Soto recanted his earlier accounts, confessing he beat his son to death; a pediatric-abuse specialist reviewed the original autopsy and concluded the injuries fit the new account.
The state reindicted Soto on aggravated murder, murder, and related charges; Soto moved to dismiss the murder charges on double-jeopardy grounds, arguing involuntary manslaughter was a lesser included offense.
The trial court denied the motion; the court of appeals reversed, treating the earlier dismissal as barring later prosecution.
The Ohio Supreme Court reversed the court of appeals, holding jeopardy had not attached to the dismissed manslaughter charge and therefore the Double Jeopardy Clauses do not bar the murder prosecutions; the Court declined to decide a separate contract/plea-agreement claim (dismissed as improvidently accepted).

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument (State)	Defendant's Argument (Soto)	Held
Whether Double Jeopardy bars prosecution for murder/aggravated murder because involuntary manslaughter was dismissed under the 2006 plea	Jeopardy never attached to the dismissed manslaughter count, so successive prosecution is permitted	The dismissed involuntary-manslaughter count was a lesser included offense; dismissal in the plea context precludes later prosecution for the greater offenses	Reversed COA: jeopardy did not attach to the dismissed count (no jury empaneled / no trial on that count), so Double Jeopardy does not bar the murder prosecutions
Whether Soto’s negotiated plea contractually bars later prosecution for greater offenses arising from same facts	The plea agreement issue was not properly before the Court and was accepted improvidently; the Court declined to decide it	Soto contended the plea bargain foreclosed later, greater charges based on the same factual episode	Dismissed as improvidently accepted; Court did not resolve the contractual/plea-agreement claim

Blockburger v. United States, 284 U.S. 299 (1932) (same-offense test for double jeopardy)
State v. Gustafson, 76 Ohio St.3d 425 (1996) (discusses when jeopardy attaches in different trial contexts)
C.K. v. State, 145 Ohio St.3d 322 (2015) (dismissal entered before jeopardy attaches does not operate as an acquittal)
Bucolo v. Adkins, 424 U.S. 641 (1976) (nolle prosequi entered before jeopardy attaches does not bar later prosecution)
United States v. Dionisio, 503 F.3d 78 (2d Cir. 2007) (jeopardy may not attach to dismissed counts under a plea agreement absent resolution of factual elements)
State v. Carpenter, 68 Ohio St.3d 59 (1993) (discusses reservation of rights to bring additional charges in plea contexts)