ROBINSON, APPELLANT, v. FENDER, WARDEN, APPELLEE.
No. 2019-1032
Supreme Court of Ohio
Submitted October 22, 2019—Decided February 13, 2020
2020-Ohio-458
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as Robinson v. Fender, Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-458.]
NOTICE
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SLIP OPINION NO. 2020-OHIO-458
ROBINSON, APPELLANT, v. FENDER, WARDEN, APPELLEE.
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as Robinson v. Fender, Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-458.]
Habeas corpus—
(No. 2019-1032—Submitted October 22, 2019—Decided February 13, 2020.)
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Ashtabula County, No. 2019-A-0039, 2019-Ohio-2514.
{¶ 1} Appellant, Jackie N. Robinson, appeals the decision of the Eleventh District Court of Appeals dismissing his petition for a writ of habeas corpus against appellee, Douglas Fender, warden of the Lake Erie Correctional Institution. After briefing was completed, Robinson filed a motion for certified copies of the record. We deny the motion and affirm the judgment of the court of appeals.
{¶ 2} On March 25, 2019, Robinson filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Eleventh District Court of Appeals alleging that he is entitled to immediate release from prison because his sentences had expired. After ordering a return on the writ, the court of appeals dismissed the complaint for failure to comply with
{¶ 3} Robinson appealed.
Analysis
{¶ 4}
{¶ 5} The affidavit Robinson submitted in this case reads, in full:
I, Jackie N. Robinson, petitioner, swear[] under penalty of perjury that I cannot recall all of the civil actions I have filed in the last five years as required by
R.C. 2969.25 , and would not want to misinform this court. Petitioner[‘s] liberty interest cannot be trumped by procedural faults beyond his control. Petitioner claims unlawful deprivation of his liberty, and requests due process, as of right, to be heard.
The court of appeals correctly concluded that Robinson had not made “any attempt to comply” with the statutory requirement. 2019-Ohio-2514 at ¶ 10.
{¶ 6} “Compliance with
{¶ 7} In his briefs before this court, Robinson does not attempt to justify his noncompliance; indeed, he does not even mention it. Instead, he simply claims that his sentences would have expired but for the trial court‘s failure to accord him the jail-time credit to which he is entitled. We therefore conclude that the court of appeals correctly dismissed Robinson‘s habeas petition.
{¶ 8} On October 2, 2019, Robinson filed a motion for a certified copy of the record, requesting a complete copy of “the records, journal entries, and indictments.” The documents to which he refers appear to be those in his underlying criminal case, which are presumably in the possession of the trial court. The trial court is not a party to this action and therefore is not an entity against which Robinson may seek relief. See, e.g., State ex rel. Nye v. Coates, 146 Ohio St.3d 426, 2016-Ohio-1559, 57 N.E.3d 1138, ¶ 6-8 (holding that a writ of procedendo could not issue against a magistrate who was not named as a party to the action). Moreover, Robinson has not suggested that the documents he seeks could explain or excuse his failure to comply with
{¶ 9} For these reasons, we deny the motion for a certified copy of the record.
Judgment affirmed.
KENNEDY, FRENCH, FISCHER, DEWINE, DONNELLY, and STEWART, JJ., concur.
O‘CONNOR, C.J., not participating.
Jackie N. Robinson, pro se.
Dave Yost, Attorney General, and Jerri L. Fosnaught, Assistant Attorney General, for appellee.