State v. Vargas, 2014 Ohio 5250

Luis M. Vargas was convicted after an August 2010 jury trial of one count of kidnapping and two counts of rape (knife used); trial court originally sentenced eight years on each count, running the two rape terms consecutively and the kidnapping term concurrently.
This court affirmed convictions but vacated and remanded the sentence for merger and resentencing under State v. Johnson and R.C. 2929.14, leading to multiple resentencings.
At a July 17, 2012 resentencing the trial court merged kidnapping into the rape counts and imposed two consecutive 8-year rape terms (16 years total); the State appealed and this court reversed the merger and ordered de novo resentencing.
At the June 2, 2014 de novo resentencing the trial court again imposed an 8-year term for each of kidnapping and the two rape counts, ordered the two rape terms to run consecutively to each other, and ran the kidnapping term concurrent with the rape terms (total 16 years).
Vargas did not object at sentencing and appealed, arguing the trial court failed to make the required statutory findings under R.C. 2929.14(C)(4) to support consecutive sentences.

Issue	Plaintiff's Argument	Defendant's Argument	Held
Whether the trial court made the R.C. 2929.14(C)(4) findings required to impose consecutive sentences	State argued the trial court made the necessary findings at sentencing (necessity to protect/punish; not disproportionate; (b) course-of-conduct/harm)	Vargas argued the court failed to make the third required finding under (b) that the harm was so great or unusual that a single term would not adequately reflect seriousness	Court held the trial court satisfied R.C. 2929.14(C)(4); its language, though not a verbatim statutory recital, was conceptually equivalent and adequate; no plain error

State v. Johnson, 128 Ohio St.3d 153 (Ohio 2010) (framework for merger and related sentencing analysis)