163 Ohio App. 3d 703 | Ohio Ct. App. | 2005
[EDITORS' NOTE: THIS PAGE CONTAINS HEADNOTES. HEADNOTES ARE NOT AN OFFICIAL PRODUCT OF THE COURT, THEREFORE THEY ARE NOT DISPLAYED.] *705 {¶ 1} Petitioner-appellant, James E. Miller, presents on appeal a single assignment of error, in which he contends that the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court erred when it dismissed his petition for a writ of habeas corpus and his petition for postconviction relief. We affirm the common pleas court's judgment.
{¶ 2} In August 2003, the Hamilton County Municipal Court, following a trial to the court, found Miller guilty of assault and sentenced him to community control. Miller took no direct appeal from his conviction.
{¶ 3} He instead filed with the municipal court a postconviction petition seeking relief from his conviction under R.C.
{¶ 4} Instead, he presented the same ground for relief to the common pleas court in the form of a postconviction petition and a petition under R.C.
{¶ 6} But the doctrine of res judicata did not operate to bar Miller's claim. Miller offered in support of his petition his own affidavit, in which he averred that he had, on three separate occasions, asked his trial counsel to demand a jury trial. His counsel's failure to accede to these requests provided the fundament for Miller's postconviction challenge to his counsel's competence. Miller thus offered outside evidence in support of his postconviction challenge to trial counsel's performance, and the claim depended for its resolution upon that evidence — he could not have presented it on direct appeal. Accordingly, we conclude that Miller's postconviction claim was not subject to dismissal under the doctrine of res judicata.
{¶ 7} Our conclusion does not, however, compel us to reverse, because the court properly denied Miller's petition, albeit for the wrong reason.4
{¶ 8} Even though the postconviction statutes permit a petition to be filed by "[a]ny person who has been convicted of a criminal offense,"5 the Ohio Supreme Court has read the language of those statutes to imply that the General Assembly did not intend to confer jurisdiction to entertain a postconviction petition upon a municipal court.6 Evidently, the court found the term "any" to be ambiguous. *707
{¶ 9} The statutes require that a postconviction petitioner file his petition with the court that sentenced him. Thus, a postconviction petitioner may seek relief only from a judgment of conviction entered by a common pleas court. It's a classicCatch-22 situation: if an aspiring petitioner is sentenced in municipal court, he has no right to postconviction relief. So one may be deprived of constitutional rights with impunity in municipal court and have no remedy? The Ohio Supreme Court evidently did not apprehend this absurdity.
{¶ 10} Miller, in his postconviction petition, sought relief from his municipal-court conviction. Because the Ohio Supreme Court has held that the postconviction statutes provide relief only from a common-pleas-court conviction, the court below properly dismissed his petition.
{¶ 12} A writ of habeas corpus is an equitable remedy and thus will not lie when the petitioner has an adequate legal remedy.8 The common pleas court essentially found that Miller had an adequate legal remedy when it dismissed his habeas corpus petition upon its determination that he should have raised his claim in a direct appeal from his conviction. But Miller could not have raised on direct appeal the challenge to counsel's competence advanced in his habeas corpus petition, because the challenge depended for its resolution on evidence outside the record. Thus, the availability of a direct appeal did not provide Miller with an adequate legal remedy.
{¶ 13} The availability of the postconviction remedies afforded by R.C.
{¶ 14} Again, this conclusion does not compel us to reverse the judgment. Again, the court was right accidentally.10 In Harrod v. Harris,11 we denied a writ of habeas corpus to a petitioner who was under postrelease control, citing the "long[-]held" rule that the habeas corpus statutes provide a remedy "only when the petitioner is presently in confinement."12 We defined "confinement" as "the actual physical custody of the state," and we rejected the petitioner's argument that postrelease control was "tantamount to confinement due to its attendant restraints on his liberty."13
{¶ 15} The municipal court sentenced Miller to community control. Thus, Miller was not in the actual physical custody of the state. We, therefore, hold that the common pleas court properly dismissed Miller's habeas corpus petition, because the habeas corpus statutes afforded him no remedy.
{¶ 17} We note that Crim.R. 57(B) provides that "[i]f no procedure is specifically prescribed by rule, [a] court may proceed in any lawful manner not inconsistent with these rules of criminal procedure, and shall look to the rules of civil procedure and to the applicable law if no rule of criminal procedure exists." The criminal rules thus contemplate resort to the civil rules for procedures not anticipated by the criminal rules. And Civ.R. 60(B)(5) permits relief from a judgment for "any * * * reason justifying [such] relief." It follows that Civ.R. 60(B) may afford a criminal defendant relief from a judgment of conviction.14 *709
{¶ 18} But Miller unambiguously invoked R.C.
Judgment affirmed.
DOAN, P.J., and HILDEBRANDT, J., concur.