Case Information
*1
[Cite as
State ex rel. Cordray v. Marshall,
R AWLINS , A PPELLANT .
[Cite as
State ex rel. Cordray v. Marshall,
seeking writ to compel judge to vacate entries granting relief to defendant convicted of murder whose appeal on same grounds was rejected — Attorney general has common-law standing as chief law officer of state to act in public interest — Judge was patently and unambiguously without jurisdiction to vacate conviction already affirmed on appeal on grounds that were rejected on appeal — Writ granted.
(No. 2009-0025 — Submitted August 11, 2009 — Decided September 30, 2009.)
A PPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Scioto County, No. 05CA3004,
__________________
Per Curiam. This is an appeal from a judgment granting appellee, Ohio
Attorney General Richard Cordray, [1] a writ of prohibition compelling a common pleas judge to vacate certain entries in favor of appellant, Adrian Rawlins, and to immediately return him to prison. The writ compels Scioto County Court of Common Pleas Judge William T. Marshall to vacate the entries granting Rawlins relief from his murder conviction and sentence, convicting him of voluntary manslaughter, and releasing him from prison and also compels the judge to immediately return Rawlins to prison to continue serving the original murder 1. This case was originally instituted by then attorney general Jim Petro and has been continued by the various successor attorneys general, up to and including current Attorney General Richard Cordray. See S.Ct.Prac.R. X(2) and Civ.R. 25(D)(1).
sentence. Because the attorney general has common-law standing to institute this prohibition action and Judge Marshall patently and unambiguously lacked jurisdiction to vacate the murder conviction based on grounds that had previously been rejected by the court of appeals in Rawlins’s direct appeal, we affirm the judgment granting the writ.
Facts
Murder Conviction and Appeal In April 1997, Rawlins shot and killed James Thomas, who had
been having an affair with Rawlins’s wife. Rawlins shot Thomas three times, including at least once from close range. Rawlins was charged with aggravated murder and a firearm specification. Following trial, a jury convicted Rawlins of murder with the firearm specification, and the Scioto County Court of Common Pleas sentenced him to a prison term of 15 years to life. On appeal, the Court of Appeals for Scioto County affirmed. State
v. Rawlins
(Dec. 24, 1998), Scioto App. No. 97CA2539,
Motion for Relief from Judgment In 2003, Rawlins filed a motion in the common pleas court for
relief from the judgment of conviction and sentence pursuant to Crim.R. 57(B) [2] 2. Crim.R. 57(B) provides, “If no procedure is specifically prescribed by rule, the court may proceed in any lawful manner not inconsistent with these rules of criminal procedure, and shall and Civ.R. 60(B). Rawlins raised the same claims in his motion that he had in his previous, unsuccessful direct appeal. The Scioto County Prosecuting Attorney at that time filed a response opposing the motion. In March 2005, Judge Marshall, who had not presided over
Rawlins’s trial, held a hearing on Rawlins’s motion for relief from judgment. At the hearing, the judge orally granted the motion, accepted Rawlins’s plea of guilty to voluntary manslaughter, sentenced Rawlins to ten years’ imprisonment, and granted Rawlins a judicial release from prison. A new prosecuting attorney had taken office since the initial trial and the filing of the motion for relief from judgment. At the hearing, the assistant prosecuting attorney representing the state informed Judge Marshall that the state had no objection to Rawlins’s motion for relief from judgment. The judge then noted that “the Court will make a finding with no objection from the State of Ohio that the verdict was against the manifest weight of the evidence and instead they should have been instructed on Voluntary Manslaughter * * *.” In journal entries dated March 23, 2005, Judge Marshall granted
Rawlins’s motion for relief, convicted him of voluntary manslaughter, sentenced him to ten years in prison, and then released him. A couple of weeks later, the judge journalized detailed findings of fact and conclusions of law. He found that Rawlins was entitled to the requested relief from his murder conviction because “[f]ailing to instruct the jury on involuntary and voluntary manslaughter violated [Rawlins’s] Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial and his Fifth Amendment due process right to have the law accurately stated.” He concluded that the evidence introduced at trial warranted jury instructions on the lesser offenses of voluntary manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter.
Prohibition Case
look to the rules of civil procedure and to the applicable law if no rule of criminal procedure exists.” In May 2005, then attorney general Jim Petro filed a complaint in
the Scioto County Court of Appeals for a writ of prohibition to compel Judge
Marshall to vacate his entries granting Rawlins’s motion for relief from judgment,
convicting him of voluntary manslaughter instead of murder, and releasing him
from prison. After Judge Marshall filed an answer and he and the parties
submitted briefs, the court of appeals granted the writ.
State ex rel. Petro v.
Marshall
, Scioto App. No. 05CA3004,
Intervention, Appeal, and Remand Three weeks after the court of appeals granted the writ, Rawlins
filed a motion to intervene as a respondent in the prohibition case as well as a
motion for relief from judgment. The court of appeals granted the motion to
intervene and ordered the parties to file responses to the motion for relief from
judgment. Rawlins appealed the judgment granting the writ to this court and also
filed a motion for a limited remand so that the court of appeals could rule on his
pending motion for relief from judgment. We granted the motion and remanded
the cause for the court of appeals to rule on Rawlins’s motion for relief from
judgment.
State ex rel. Petro v. Marshall
,
vacated its previous judgment granting the writ of prohibition. The court ordered
that the parties submit evidence and briefs on the attorney general’s prohibition
claim and further ordered that Rawlins remain in prison during the pendency of
the case. We granted Rawlins’s application to dismiss his appeal from the
vacated judgment.
State ex rel. Dann v. Marshall
, 114 Ohio St.3d 1496, 2007-
Ohio-4160,
{¶ 10}
In November 2008, the court of appeals again granted the writ
“[b]ecause Judge Marshall did not have jurisdiction to grant Rawlins’ Civ.R.
60(B) motion.”
State ex rel. Rogers v. Marshall
, Scioto App. No. 05CA3004,
{¶ 11} This cause is now before the court upon Rawlins’s appeal as of right.
Legal Analysis
Standing
{¶ 12}
“Before an Ohio court can consider the merits of a legal claim, the
person or entity seeking relief must establish standing to sue.”
Ohio Pyro, Inc. v.
Ohio Dept. of Commerce, Div. of State Fire Marshal
,
common-law standing to institute the prohibition action. Rogers , 2008-Ohio- 6341, at ¶ 14-19. Rawlins asserts that the court of appeals erred in so holding. In Ohio, the attorney general is a constitutional officer. Section 1, Article III, Ohio Constitution. In addition, the General Assembly has recognized the attorney general’s status as the chief law officer for the state and has set forth the following duties: “The attorney general is the chief law officer for the state and all
its departments and shall be provided with adequate office space in Columbus. Except as provided in division (E) of section 120.06 and in sections 3517.152 to 3517.157 of the Revised Code, no state officer or board, or head of a department or institution of the state shall employ, or be represented by, other counsel or attorneys at law. The attorney general shall appear for the state in the trial and argument of all civil and criminal causes in the supreme court in which the state is directly or indirectly interested. When required by the governor or the general assembly, the attorney general shall appear for the state in any court or tribunal in a cause in which the state is a party, or in which the state is directly interested. Upon the written request of the governor, the attorney general shall prosecute any person indicted for a crime.” R.C. 109.02. Rawlins asserts that the attorney general’s liberal interpretation of
his powers would render R.C. Chapter 109 meaningless. In essence, Rawlins contends that the attorney general’s powers should be restricted to those specified by the General Assembly and that the attorney general thus has no standing in the underlying prohibition case because the case was not instituted in this court, and neither the governor nor the General Assembly requested that the attorney general bring the action. Rawlins’s assertion is incorrect. We have held that “when these constitutions were adopted (both
state and federal), they were adopted with a recognition of established
contemporaneous common-law principles; and * * * they did not repudiate, but
cherished, the established common law.”
State v. Wing
(1902),
{¶ 19}
In
State ex rel. Little v. Dayton & South-Eastern RR. Co.
(1881),
{¶ 20}
As the court of appeals persuasively concluded in granting the
writ, “[e]qually important legal interests are at stake here in the attorney general’s
efforts to obtain the common law writ of prohibition. If the attorney general can
enjoin a public nuisance in the absence of an individual relator [as in
Little
],
surely the attorney general can promote the proper allocation of judicial power
among Ohio’s courts, notwithstanding the absence of the prosecuting attorney’s
participation.”
Rogers
,
prosecuting attorney during the proceeding before Judge Marshall to vacate the murder conviction adequately represented the state’s interests so that the attorney general is precluded from collaterally asserting the state’s interests in a prohibition case. The attorney general did not directly interfere with the local
prosecutor’s criminal prosecution of Rawlins. Instead, as the court of appeals concluded, the attorney general “filed a distinct civil action that seeks to prohibit a court from acting where it purportedly lacks jurisdiction.” Rogers , 2008-Ohio- 6341, at ¶ 18. Given the unique, limited nature of the attorney general’s exercise
of authority in this matter and the important statewide interests in reinstating a murder conviction vacated by a court without jurisdiction to do so, we hold that the attorney general had the requisite common-law standing to commence the prohibition action against Judge Marshall. The exercise of this authority under the unique, limited facts of this case is consistent with the common-law powers of the majority of state attorneys general. See generally Myers and Ross, State Attorneys General, Powers and Responsibilities (2 Ed.2007) 40.
Prohibition Claim The court of appeals granted the attorney general a writ of
prohibition to compel Judge Marshall to vacate his entries granting Rawlins relief
from his murder conviction and sentence, convicting him of voluntary
manslaughter, and releasing him from prison. The writ further ordered the judge
to immediately return Rawlins to prison to continue serving his murder sentence.
To be entitled to the requested writ of prohibition, the attorney
general had to establish that (1) Judge Marshall was about to exercise judicial or
quasi-judicial power, (2) the exercise of that power was unauthorized by law, and
(3) denying the writ would result in injury for which no other adequate remedy
existed in the ordinary course of law.
State ex rel. Furnas v. Monnin
, 120 Ohio
St.3d 279,
unambiguously lacks jurisdiction to proceed in a cause, prohibition * * * will
issue to prevent any future unauthorized exercise of jurisdiction and to correct the
results of prior jurisdictionally unauthorized actions.”
State ex rel. Mayer v.
Henson
, 97 Ohio St.3d 276,
Patent and Unambiguous Lack of Jurisdiction
{¶ 27}
This case involves the doctrine of the law of the case. “The law of
the case is a longstanding doctrine in Ohio jurisprudence.”
Hopkins v. Dyer
, 104
Ohio St.3d 461,
decision of a reviewing court in a case remains the law of that case on the legal
questions involved for all subsequent proceedings in the case at both the trial and
reviewing levels.’ ”
Hopkins
, at ¶ 15, quoting
Nolan
,
Marshall from vacating his murder conviction and releasing him from prison because the transcript of the hearing on his motion for relief from judgment established that the judge granted the motion based, in part, on the conviction’s being against the manifest weight of the evidence, a claim that had not been raised by the parties or addressed by the court of appeals in his prior appeal. Rawlins’s claim lacks merit. In his subsequently journalized findings of fact, Judge Marshall found that the sole basis for his judgment granting Rawlins’s motion for relief from the murder conviction and sentence was the common pleas court’s refusal to instruct the jury on voluntary and involuntary manslaughter. Rawlins next asserts that any failure by Judge Marshall to comply
with the law of the case was a nonjurisdictional defect that is not cognizable by extraordinary relief in prohibition. As a general rule, courts of common pleas have jurisdiction to rule on postjudgment motions, including motions for relief from judgment. See, e.g., State ex rel. Enyart v. O’Neill (1995), 71 Ohio St.3d 655, 656, 646 N.E.2d 1110 (“In that [the common pleas court judge] possessed jurisdiction to rule on the Civ.R. 60(B) motion, the fact that she may have exercised that jurisdiction erroneously does not give rise to extraordinary relief by prohibition”); State ex rel. Gyurcsik v. Angelotta (1977), 50 Ohio St.2d 345, 4 O.O.3d 482, 364 N.E.2d 284 (writ of prohibition denied in case in which trial court granted relief from judgment based on Civ.R. 60(B)(5)). Rawlins’s assertion, however, is again mistaken. We have
expressly held that the Ohio Constitution “does not grant to a court of common
pleas jurisdiction to review a prior mandate of a court of appeals.”
State ex rel.
Potain v. Mathews
(1979),
Common Pleas
(1978), 55 Ohio St.2d 94, 9 O.O.3d 88, 378 N.E.2d 162, we
granted a writ of prohibition to prevent a trial from proceeding when the trial
court had granted a motion to withdraw a guilty plea after the conviction and
sentence based on the plea had been affirmed on appeal. By so holding, we
concluded that the trial court had no power to vacate a judgment that has been
affirmed by the appellate court, “for this action would affect the decision of the
reviewing court, which is not within the power of a trial court to do.” Id., 55 Ohio
St.2d at 98,
overrule
Potain
,
by a former attorney general for writs of mandamus and prohibition is also
misplaced. See
State ex rel. Montgomery v. Bolt-Meredith
(2000), 89 Ohio St.3d
1475,
grant the motion on the same grounds that had been previously rejected on appeal
in the same case was unauthorized. Moreover, this lack of jurisdiction was patent
and unambiguous. Under these circumstances, Rawlins’s argument that the state
has an adequate remedy in the ordinary course of law through its local
representative – the prosecuting attorney – is thus without merit. “Where
jurisdiction is patently and unambiguously lacking, [a relator] need not establish
the lack of an adequate remedy at law because the availability of alternate
remedies like appeal would be immaterial.”
State ex rel. Sapp v. Franklin Cty.
Court of Appeals
,
Res Judicata, Waiver, and Laches
{¶ 37} Rawlins finally claims that res judicata, waiver, and laches barred the attorney general’s prohibition claim. These defenses are inapplicable here. Res judicata “presupposes a
judgment entered by a court of competent jurisdiction.” State ex rel. Rose v. Ohio Dept. of Rehab. and Corr. (2001), 91 Ohio St.3d 453, 455, 746 N.E.2d 1103. Judge Marshall lacked jurisdiction to disregard the mandate of the court of appeals established in Rawlins’s direct appeal when Rawlins’s motion raised the same claims. Nor can waiver apply to a challenge to the subject-matter
jurisdiction of a court.
Rosen v. Celebrezze
,
full and fair opportunity to contest the writ sought by the attorney general. See
State ex rel. King v. Summit Cty. Council
, 99 Ohio St.3d 172,
Oral Argument We deny Rawlins’s motion for oral argument. This case does not
involve issues of factual complexity, substantive constitutional considerations, or
conflict between courts of appeals. And although this appeal does raise
interesting issues of arguable legal significance, the parties’ briefs are sufficient to
permit a resolution of the case. See
State ex rel. Sawicki v. Lucas Cty. Court of
Common Pleas
, 121 Ohio St.3d 507,
Conclusion Therefore, for the foregoing reasons, under the narrow facts
presented in this specific case, the attorney general possessed common-law standing to bring the prohibition action, and he established his entitlement to the writ. Judge Marshall patently and unambiguously lacked jurisdiction to grant a motion for relief from a murder conviction and sentence based on claims that had previously been rejected by the court of appeals in an appeal in the same case. Consequently, we affirm the judgment of the court of appeals granting the writ of prohibition. By so holding, we need not address the attorney general’s alternate argument for affirmance – that Judge Marshall lacked jurisdiction over Rawlins’s motion for relief from judgment, which should have been treated as an untimely petition for postconviction relief.
Judgment affirmed. M OYER , C.J., and L UNDBERG TRATTON , O’C ONNOR , O’D ONNELL , L ANZINGER , and C UPP , JJ., concur.
P FEIFER , J., concurs in judgment only.
__________________
Richard Cordray, Attorney General, Benjamin C. Mizer, Solicitor General, and Elisabeth A. Long and M. Scott Criss, Assistant Attorneys General, for appellee.
Timothy Young, State Public Defender, and Stephen P. Hardwick, Assistant State Public Defender, for appellant.
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