In re R.B. (Slip Opinion)
[Until this оpinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as In re R.B., Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-5476.]
NOTICE
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports. Readers are requested to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before the opinion is published.
SLIP OPINION NO. 2020-OHIO-5476
IN RE R.B.
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as In re R.B., Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-5476.]
Juvenilе law—Sex-offender-classification hearing—A juvenile court does not lose jurisdiction to enter an order pursuant to
(No. 2019-1325—Submitted August 5, 2020—Decided December 2, 2020.)
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Hamilton County, Nos. C-170622 and C-170623, 2019-Ohio-3298.
{¶ 1} This case involves the procedures by which a juvenile is classified as a sex offender. When R.B. was a teenager, he sexually abused his two four-year-old cousins. The juvenile court adjudicated R.B. delinquent, classified him as a sex offender, and imposed a disposition that included probation until his 21st birthday. In juvenile cases, the court is required to hold a second sex-offender-classification hearing upon the juvenile’s completion of the disposition. The court held the seсond hearing and kept R.B.’s classification the same. R.B. challenges the timing of that hearing.
{¶ 2} R.B. first contends that the juvenile court was required to hold the review hearing and issue its decision on the exact day his disposition ended (in other words, the day that his term of probation expired). He says that once he completed his disposition, the court lost jurisdiction to continue his classification, and he may no longer be classified as a sex offender. We disagree. The language “upon completion of the disposition,”
{¶ 3} Second, R.B. argues that the juvenile court lacked jurisdiction because its order continuing his classification was not issued until after his 21st birthday. Here, too, we disagree. By statute, the juvenile court maintains jurisdiction to review a juvenile’s sex-offender classification after the juvenile reaches the age of 21. See
I. The juvenile sex-offender-classification process
{¶ 4} When a juvenile сommits a sex offense, the juvenile court has the ability to classify the juvenile as a sex offender. See generally
{¶ 5} Unlike adult offenders, whose classification levels are based solely on the underlying offense, see
{¶ 6} R.B.’s disposition ended on his 21st birthday. A Hamilton County juvenile-court magistrate held R.B.’s completion-of-disposition hearing two months before his birthday and issued orders continuing his sex-offender classification the week before he turned 21. The juvenile court adopted the magistrate’s decision to maintain R.B.’s sex-offender classification, but it did not do so until after R.B.’s disposition had ended and he had turned 21. R.B. therefore contends that the classification order is invalid and that he does not have a duty to register as a sex offender.
{¶ 7} In order to better understand R.B.’s challenge, it is helpful to lay out the relevant portions of the statutes outlining the sex-offender-classification process for juveniles before we delve further into the facts of this case.
{¶ 8}
{¶ 9}
{¶ 10} The juvenile court must hold a second hearing to review the classification “upon completion of the disposition” (we will call this the “completion-of-disposition hearing“).
{¶ 11} Finally,
{¶ 12} With that understanding, we turn to the history of this case.
II. R.B.’s classification
{¶ 13} When R.B. was 14 years old, he sexually abused his two four-year-old cousins. He confessed what he had done, and in October 2011, he was adjudicated delinquent on two counts of gross sexual imposition. The juvenile court held a dispositional hearing on December 2. The court placed R.B. on probation with a suspended commitmеnt to the Ohio Department of Youth Services that was to remain in place until he reached the age of 21. As a condition of probation, the court required R.B. to complete a residential treatment program.
{¶ 14} The juvenile court issued an entry the following week continuing the case to January for the court to hold an initial sex-offender-classification hearing. After the hearing, the court classified R.B. as a Tier I offender. At that time, the court provided R.B. and his mother a form notifying them that as a result of R.B.’s classification, he would be required to register annually for a period оf ten years.
{¶ 15} After his initial classification hearing, R.B. continued to comply with his probation obligations. R.B. successfully completed the residential portion of his treatment program in February 2013 and reentered the community under an electronic-monitoring requirement. He attended counseling and sex-offender treatment on an outpatient basis. In July 2013, the probation department notified the court that R.B. had satisfied the terms of his probation. The court therefore ordered that R.B. “be released from official probation and placed on non-reporting probation with Monitorеd Time.” See
{¶ 16} R.B. stayed out of trouble and little happened in his case for another year. In July 2014, R.B. filed an application asking to have his record sealed, which the juvenile court denied two months later, noting that the “requisite requirements for eligibility have not yet been met” and that R.B. remained under a duty to register as a sex offender until 2022.
{¶ 17} Following that decision, the court scheduled a completion-of-dispositiоn hearing pursuant to
{¶ 18} The court took no further action on R.B.’s classification until October 24, 2016, when the state filed a motion asking the juvenile court to hold a completion-of-disposition hearing. R.B. objected to the state’s request, asserting that the juvenile cоurt lacked jurisdiction to go forward with the hearing because it had not been held “upon completion of the disposition,” as required under
{¶ 19} In January 2017, a juvenile-court magistrate held a hearing to determine whether the court had jurisdiction to conduct the completion-of-disposition hearing. R.B. contended that he had completed his disposition at the time he finished outpatient treatment and was released from his probation reporting obligations and that the hearing was therefore untimely. Alternatively, if the court determined that nonreporting probation was a valid dispositional order, then R.B. reasoned that he had not yet completed his disposition and the state’s attempt to hold the hearing was premature.
{¶ 20} The juvenile-court magistrate determined that she could proceed with the completion-of-disposition hearing. R.B. filed objections, and the parties argued the matter before the juvenile-court judge. On March 6, 2017, the judge issued a decision finding that the court had jurisdiction to proceed with the completion-of-disposition hearing. The court concluded that R.B. remained on nonreporting probation with a suspended commitment to DYS and that R.B. was therefore still subject to the jurisdiction of the juvenile court.
{¶ 21} The magistrate held the completion-of-disposition hearing on May 8, 2017, and issued orders on July 13 and 14, 2017, continuing R.B.’s Tier I classification. R.B. turned 21 years of age one week later, on July 20, 2017.
{¶ 22} R.B. filed objections to the magistrate’s decision. The juvenile-court judge held a hearing on the objections in September and issued a written decision the following month adopting the magistrate’s orders continuing R.B.’s Tier I classification.
{¶ 23} R.B. appealed, asserting that his initial classification order was invalid, that the juvenile court lacked jurisdiction to hold the completion-of-disposition hearing because it did not take place at the time the disposition was completed, that the juvenile court violated R.B.’s due-process rights by not holding the completion-of-disposition hearing at the time that he had completed his treatment, and that the juvenile court abused its discretion in continuing R.B.’s classification. The First District Court of Appeals ordered further briefing on the question whether the juvenile court lost jurisdiction to adopt the magistrate’s order continuing R.B.’s classification once R.B. reached 21 years of age. The court of appeals concluded that the juvenile court lacked jurisdiction to issue orders continuing R.B.’s classification both because he had reached the age of 21 and because his disposition had ended when he turned 21. It therefore vacated the classification orders. 2019-Ohio-3298. Based on its resolution of the jurisdiction question, the court of appeals held that R.B.’s other arguments were moot and declined to address them.
{¶ 24} We accepted the state’s appeal, which raised the following proposition of law: “Once a juvenile court makes an appropriate initial classification under
{¶ 25} R.B. filed a cross-appeal raising three propositions of law. We accepted discretionary review over one of them, which asserts that the completion-of-disposition hearing must be held at the time the juvenile completes treatment to comply with due process. Id.
III. The juvenile court does not lose jurisdiction to enter an order pursuant to R.C. 2152.84 when the juvenile reaches the age of 21
{¶ 26} We first take up the portion of the First District’s holding that the juvenile court lost jurisdiction to continue R.B.’s Tier I classification once he turned 21.
{¶ 27}
The juvenile court has jurisdiction over a person who is adjudicated a delinquent child or juvenile traffic offender prior to attaining eighteen years of age until the person attains twenty-one years of age, and, for purposes of that jurisdiction related to that adjudication, except as otherwise provided in this division, a person who is so adjudicated a delinquent child or juvenile traffic offender shall be deemed a “child” until the person attains twenty-one years of age.
{¶ 28} That argument might be successful if that statute was the only source of the juvenile court’s jurisdiction. But another provision grants the juvenile court “exclusive original jurisdiction” to carry out its obligations under the sex-offender-classification statutes: “[t]o conduct the hearings, and to make the determinations, adjudications, and orders authorized or required under sections
{¶ 29} R.B. picks up on the word “child” in
{¶ 30} The difficulty with that reading is that, by their plain terms, the classification statutes extend a juvenile court’s authority over classification orders beyond a juvenile’s 21st birthday. As outlined above, the periodic-review provision allows the juvenile to petition the juvenile court to reduce or remove his classification at the following
{¶ 31} Thus, the language in
{¶ 32} We therefore conclude that
{¶ 33} This court’s holding in State ex rel. Jean-Baptiste v. Kirsch, 134 Ohio St.3d 421, 2012-Ohio-5697, 983 N.E.2d 302, does not compel a contrary result. Thаt case dealt with the juvenile court’s imposition of an initial classification order pursuant to
{¶ 34} In this case, the juvenile court had issued its initial classification under
IV. The timing requirements of R.C. 2152.84 are not jurisdictional
A. The meaning of “upon completion of the disposition”
{¶ 35} The First District determined that R.B.’s disposition, by its own terms, ended at the same time he turned 21.1 2019-Ohio-3298 at ¶ 14. It concluded:
Because the trial court did not comрlete the statutorily-required process for classifying R.B. prior to the completion of his disposition upon his turning 21, it had no jurisdiction to classify him as a Tier I offender. The initial classification order is not revived or still in effect, and therefore, there is no order in place requiring R.B. to register as a sex offender.
Id. Thus, the court of appeals read the language “upon completion” in the statute as requiring the hearing to occur prior to the completion of the disposition.
{¶ 36} R.B. contends that “upon completion” means the hearing must be held on the very day that the juvenile’s disposition ends—no earlier and no later. We find this to be аn excessively technical reading of the word “upon.” Indeed, taken to its logical conclusion, such an interpretation would mean that if the disposition ends upon the juvenile’s reaching the age of 21, the juvenile court would be foreclosed from holding the completion-of-disposition hearing altogether: under R.B.’s view, the court can’t hold it before the disposition is complete, but it loses jurisdiction to hold it as soon as R.B. turns 21.
{¶ 37} Moreover,
{¶ 38} Instead, we find that the phrase “upon completion” is given meaning by the surrounding language.
{¶ 39} Thus, we do not read the phrase “upon completion” to limit the juvenile court’s ability to conduct a completion-of-disposition hearing to a single day. The lack of more specific language lends itself to a reading that the juvenile court is directed to conduct the completion-of-disposition hearing within a reasonable proximity—either before or after—the date the disposition is scheduled to end.
B. The timing requirement of R.C. 2152.84 is not jurisdictional
{¶ 40} R.B.’s argument fails for another reason: the requirement that the hearing
{¶ 41} R.B. focuses on the word “shall” in
{¶ 42} But not all mandatory provisions are jurisdictional in nature. Smith v. May, 159 Ohio St.3d 106, 2020-Ohio-61, 148 N.E.3d 542, ¶ 31; State v. Martin, 154 Ohio St.3d 513, 2018-Ohio-3226, 116 N.E.3d 127, ¶ 27. We see no language in
{¶ 43} This does not mean that the juvenile court may conduct the completion-of-disposition hearing any time it wants as long as the registration order remains in effect. That would render the language “upon completion of the disposition” meaningless. (Indeed, the failure to hold a hearing within a reasonable time could affect the ability of the juvenile to seek further review of his classification pursuant to
{¶ 44} But the question in this case is whether the juvenile court loses jurisdiction to hold the hearing based on an alleged failure to comply with a statutory timing requirement. We conclude that it does not.
C. The effect of the completion-of-disposition hearing on the initial classification order
{¶ 45} The First District held that because the juvenile court did not hold the completion-of-disposition hearing before R.B.’s disposition ended, R.B. was no longer under a valid classification order. 2019-Ohio-3298 at ¶ 14. The state contends that the initial classification order remained in effect pursuant to
{¶ 47} The plain language of
V. We decline to reach R.B.’s due-process argument
{¶ 48} R.B. raised an assignment of error in the court of appeals contending that his due-process rights were violated as a result of the amount of time that passed between the date that he completed his treatment and the completion-of-disposition hearing. As noted above, the First District determined that this question was moot as a result of its conclusion that the juvenile court lacked jurisdiction to issue the order continuing R.B.’s classification. R.B. conceded this point in his brief in support of jurisdiction. Because there is no judgment below for us to review on the due-process question, we dismiss this proрosition as having been improvidently allowed.
VI. Conclusion
{¶ 49}
Judgment reversed and cause remanded.
KENNEDY, FRENCH, GALLAGHER, DONNELLY, and STEWART, JJ., concur.
O’CONNOR, C.J., concurs in judgment only.
EILEEN A. GALLAGHER, J., of the Eighth District Court of Appeals, sitting for FISCHER, J.
Joseph T. Deters, Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney, and Paula Adams, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellant and cross-appellee.
Raymond T. Faller, Hamilton County Public Defender, and Julie Kahrs Nessler, Assistant Public Defender, for appellee and cross-appellant.
Timothy Young, Ohio Public Defender, and Brooke M. Burns, Assistant Public Defender, urging affirmance for amici curiae Office of the Ohio Public Defender, Children’s Law Center, Justice for Children, Juvenile Law Center, National Juvenile Defender Center, and Professor Catherine Carpenter.
Michael C. O’Malley, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor, and Daniel T. Van, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, urging reversal for amicus curiae Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association.