STATE OF OHIO, Respondent-Appellee, vs. UGBE OJILE, Petitioner-Appellant.
APPEAL NO. C-160425
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT OF OHIO HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO
December 29, 2017
2017-Ohio-9319
TRIAL NOS. B-1007149-C, B-1006797-C
Judgment in B-1007149-C is: Affirmed
Judgment in B-1006797-C is: Affirmed in Part, Reversed in Part, and Cause Remanded
Date of Judgment Entry on Appeal: December 29, 2017
Joseph T. Deters, Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney, and Ronald W. Springman, Jr., Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for Respondent-Appellee,
The Olawale Law Firm, LLC, and Emmanuel Olawale, for Petitioner-Appellant.
{¶1} Petitioner-appellant Ugbe Ojile appeals the denial of his petitions pursuant to
{¶2} In 2011, Ojile was convicted on multiple counts of aggravated robbery, robbery, conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery, and complicity to robbery. Following his resentencing in 2013 upon our remand in his direct appeals, he stood convicted on four counts of aggravated robbery, five counts of complicity, and a single count of conspiracy. State v. Ojile, 1st Dist. Hamilton Nos. C-110677 and C-110678, 2012-Ohio-6015, appeal not accepted, 135 Ohio St.3d 1414, 2013-Ohio-1622, 986 N.E.2d 30.
{¶3} In 2012 and in 2016, in each of the cases numbered B-1007149-C and B-1006797-C, Ojile filed with the common pleas court a postconviction petition. On appeal from the denial of Ojile‘s 2012 petitions, we affirmed the common pleas court‘s judgments. State v. Ojile, 1st Dist. Hamilton No. C-120601 (June 12, 2013). In this appeal from the court‘s judgments dismissing Ojile‘s 2016 petitions, he presents two assignments of error, challenging the dismissal of those petitions for lack of jurisdiction and the court‘s failure to conduct an evidentiary hearing. We address the assignments of error together and sustain them in part.
{¶4} Ojile, Amy Hoover, and Kenyatta Erkins were indicted on multiple counts of aggravated robbery, robbery, conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery, and complicity to robbery, following an investigation by the Cincinnati Police Department and other local police agencies into reports that patrons of two gambling casinos had been followed from the casinos to their homes and robbed at gunpoint. The relevant charges here are contained in count three of the indictment in the case numbered B-1006797-C, charging Ojile, Hoover, and Erkins with the February 2009 aggravated robbery of Michael Weisbrod, and in counts 12 and 14 of the indictment in the case numbered B-1007149-C, charging Ojile and Erkins with the April 2010 aggravated robbery of Daniel Duncan and the June 2010 aggravated robbery of Tien Dao. Ojile and Erkins were tried together to the court. Hoover had accepted a plea offer of case consideration in exchange for her testimony at their trial.
{¶5} At trial, Michael Weisbrod testified that he had left a casino on February 9, 2009, in possession of over $8,000 in cash and returned to his apartment in the early morning hours of February 10. Video from the casino‘s security camera showed Erkins following Weisbrod that night. After Weisbrod had returned home, a woman knocked on his door and asked him if anyone was living in the apartment downstairs. Through the closed door, Weisbrod told her, “No,” and she left. On the night of February 10, a man came to Weisbrod‘s door, asked the same question, and received the same response. Then, on February 11, at around 9:00 p.m., Weisbrod was in the basement of his apartment building, checking for the cause of a power outage in his apartment, when he was confronted by a man and a woman who told him that they were armed, tied him up, and ordered him to tell
{¶6} In April 2010, an armed man whose face was concealed with a bandana relieved Daniel Duncan of approximately $1,250 in cash and his .40-caliber Glock handgun, along with the Smith and Wesson ammunition that he carried for the gun. When Ojile and Erkins were apprehended in October 2010, police found sitting on the floor of Erkins‘s car, between Ojile‘s legs, a backpack containing Duncan‘s gun and ammunition, along with personal papers belonging to Ojile. Tanks testified that Ojile had admitted to his involvement in a robbery during which he had stolen the victim‘s gun.
{¶7} In June 2010, two armed men relieved Tien Dao of his wallet after he had returned home from a casino. Security-camera video showed Erkins following Dao as he left the casino. Contents of Dao‘s wallet, including two California driver‘s
The Postconviction Petitions
{¶8} To prevail on a postconviction claim, a postconviction petitioner must demonstrate a denial or infringement of his rights during the proceedings resulting in his conviction that rendered that conviction void or voidable under the Ohio Constitution or the United States Constitution.
{¶9} A postconviction claim is subject to dismissal without a hearing if the petitioner has failed to submit with his petition evidentiary material setting forth sufficient operative facts to demonstrate substantive grounds for relief.
{¶10} The 2016 postconviction petitions from which this appeal derives were filed well after the time prescribed by
{¶11} The common pleas court dismissed Ojile‘s 2016 postconviction petitions for lack of jurisdiction, upon its determination that Ojile had failed to meet
{¶12} Ineffective assistance of trial counsel in presenting alibi. In his first ground for relief, Ojile challenged his trial counsel‘s effectiveness in preparing and presenting his alibi to the robbery of Michael Weisbrod on the night of February 11, 2009. Ojile argued that counsel had not functioned as the counsel guaranteed under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution, when counsel had subpoenaed and presented to the court documents to demonstrate his presence in New York that night, but failed to investigate, or to call a witness to testify to, the meaning of those documents. We conclude that the common pleas court erred in dismissing this claim without an evidentiary hearing.
{¶13} Ojile was charged in count three of the indictment in the case numbered B-1006797-C with the February 11, 2009 aggravated robbery of Weisbrod.
{¶14} Three weeks later, counsel subpoenaed from Continental “boarding and flight information” for Ojile for February 11 and 12, 2009. A week later, counsel received in return 11 pages of internal ticketing-and-tracking records for those dates, certified as accurate by the airline‘s records custodian.
{¶15} That same day, after the defense had rested, Ojile‘s counsel moved those records into evidence, and they were admitted, as a defense exhibit in support of Ojile‘s alibi for the February 11 aggravated robbery. The state stipulated to their authenticity, but disputed defense counsel‘s assertion that the records “also include flight coupons, which indicate somebody boarded a flight.” The assistant prosecuting attorney argued that the records did not “indicat[e] [Ojile] was ever on any of these flights,” and that “[it was] apparent he couldn‘t have been on all of them because some of [them] contradict each other.” Then, in closing, the assistant prosecuting attorney argued that Ojile‘s culpability in the February 11 robbery had been proved by the trial testimony of Hoover and Tanks. Defense counsel, in closing, argued that Weisbrod had testified that only two people, a woman and a man, had
{¶16} Before the trial court returned with its findings, defense counsel moved for acquittal on the February 11 aggravated robbery under
{¶17} In his direct appeal, Ojile presented various challenges to his conviction in the February 11 aggravated robbery. In overruling an assignment of error challenging the sufficiency of the evidence supporting that conviction, we dismissed as irrelevant Ojile‘s argument that Tanks‘s and Hoover‘s testimony had not been credible, because that argument went to the weight of the evidence, not its legal sufficiency, and was thus a matter to be determined by the trial court, sitting as the trier of fact. Ojile, 2012-Ohio-6015, at ¶ 56.
{¶18} We also overruled an assignment of error contending that that conviction had been secured through the state‘s use of perjured testimony by Hoover, because we found that her testimony had not been demonstrably false. We determined that the trial court “could reasonably have found that Weisbrod had been mistaken about the number of attackers,” when the robbery had occurred in
{¶19} Finally, we overruled an assignment of error challenging the admissibility of Tanks‘s testimony to Ojile‘s incriminating statements on the ground that his statements had been elicited in violation of his right to counsel. We noted Ojile‘s inability to identify what statements Tanks had elicited after he had allegedly begun acting as an agent of the state. And we concluded that Tanks‘s testimony, even if “improper,” could not be said to have been “prejudicial in the overall context of the trial given the overwhelming evidence against Ojile.” Id. at ¶ 69-72.
{¶20} Two months after we decided the direct appeal, Ojile raised for the first time his trial counsel‘s effectiveness in preparing and presenting his alibi for the February 11 aggravated robbery. In a timely filed
{¶21} In his timely filed 2012 pro se postconviction petition, Ojile renewed his perjured-testimony and right-to-counsel challenges. The only evidence outside of
{¶22} In the first ground for relief advanced in the late and successive postconviction petitions from which this appeal derives, Ojile challenged his trial counsel‘s effectiveness in presenting his alibi for the February 11 aggravated robbery. To avoid dismissal of his ineffective-counsel claim without a hearing, he bore the initial burden of demonstrating substantive grounds for relief.
{¶23} In support of his ineffective-counsel claim, Ojile offered outside evidence in the form of two affidavits made by the records custodian of United Airlines, which had succeeded Continental Airlines when the companies merged in 2011. In her affidavits, the records custodian explained that the Continental ticketing-and-tracking records admitted at trial, while “not * * * readily comprehensible by those outside the [airline],” confirmed that on February 11, 2009, Ojile had travelled from Cincinnati to Newark on a flight departing at 11:59 a.m. and arriving at 1:54 p.m., and that he had returned the next day on a flight from Newark to Cincinnati departing at 8:57 a.m. and arriving at 11:24 a.m. That evidence, Ojile asserted, proved his alibi for the February 11 aggravated robbery and thus showed outcome-determinative ineffectiveness on the part of trial counsel in failing to present that evidence in support of the alibi.
{¶24} To demonstrate his diligence in attempting to discover the facts upon which his ineffective-counsel claim depended, Ojile submitted two affidavits, along with documents supporting the averments of those affidavits. He averred that he had first initiated efforts to secure from Continental conclusive evidence
{¶25} Ojile had also secured, in October 2013, an affidavit made by Erkins exonerating him in the Duncan robbery. And Ojile had discovered additional evidence in the spring of 2014 concerning previously-undisclosed details about Tanks‘s plea agreement with federal prosecutors. He offered that evidence in support of his challenges in all three postconviction claims to the credibility of Hoover and Tanks and to Tanks‘s motives for testifying against Ojile at trial. Finally, Ojile provided a detailed accounting of his and his postconviction counsel‘s efforts, after securing the records custodian‘s second affidavit, to gather evidence, review the record (including trial counsel‘s file, which was not received until April 2015), and file his second postconviction petition.
{¶27} Our review of the trial record and Ojile‘s postconviction petition, along with the evidentiary material offered in support of the first ground for relief, persuades us that Ojile sustained his initial burden of submitting in support of that claim evidentiary material setting forth sufficient operative facts to demonstrate an outcome-determinative deficiency in his trial counsel‘s preparation and presentation of his alibi for the February 11 aggravated robbery. And we conclude that the common pleas court had jurisdiction to entertain Ojile‘s late and successive ineffective-counsel claim, when he supported that claim with evidence demonstrating that he had been unavoidably prevented from discovering the facts upon which the claim depended, within the time prescribed by
{¶28} We, therefore, hold that the court erred when it dismissed Ojile‘s ineffective-assistance claim for lack of jurisdiction and without an evidentiary hearing. Accordingly, we sustain in part the assignments of error.
{¶30} The fair-trial guarantee of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution imposes upon the state a duty to disclose to a criminal accused evidence that is favorable and material to his guilt or punishment. See Brady v. Maryland, 373 U.S. 87, 83 S.Ct. 1194, 10 L.Ed.2d 215 (1963). This principle extends to evidence affecting a witness‘s credibility. Giglio v. United States, 405 U.S. 150, 154, 92 S.Ct. 763, 31 L.Ed.2d 104 (1972). Undisclosed evidence is “material” if, “considered collectively,” the evidence “could reasonably be taken to put the whole case in such a different light as to undermine confidence in the verdict.” See Kyles v. Whitley, 514 U.S. 419, 434-436, 115 S.Ct. 1555, 131 L.Ed.2d 490 (1995).
{¶32} As we noted, Ojile unsuccessfully challenged on direct appeal and in his 2012 postconviction petition the admission of Tanks‘s testimony concerning his incriminating statements. In his direct appeal, we noted that his argument that Tanks‘s testimony had not been credible was not pertinent to his challenge to the sufficiency of the evidence to support his conviction for the February 11 aggravated robbery of Weisbrod, because the matter of Tanks‘s credibility was for the trial court, sitting as the trier of fact. Ojile, 2012-Ohio-6015, at ¶ 56. We also rejected in the direct appeal Ojile‘s right-to-counsel challenge to the admissibility of Tanks‘s testimony, upon our determination that that testimony, even if “improper,” could not be said to have been “prejudicial in the overall context of the trial given the overwhelming evidence against Ojile.” Id. at ¶ 69-72. And we applied the doctrine of the law of the case to affirm the denial of the
{¶33} Ojile supported his 2016 postconviction Brady and right-to-counsel claims with outside evidence concerning the sealed portion of the plea agreement between Tanks and federal prosecutors. Ojile also argued in his petition that Erkins‘s statement in his affidavit that he alone had been responsible for the Duncan robbery, along with the other evidence supporting the petition‘s first ground for relief, undermines the credibility of Tanks‘s and Hoover‘s testimony to Ojile‘s involvement in the February 11 aggravated robbery. That outside evidence may fairly be said to have been unavoidably undiscoverable until well after the time prescribed by
{¶34} But Ojile‘s convictions for the February 11 aggravated robbery of Weisbrod and the Duncan and Dao aggravated robberies were not wholly dependent on Tanks‘s trial testimony to Ojile‘s incriminating statements. Ojile was convicted for the Duncan and Dao aggravated robberies based not only on Tanks‘s testimony, but also on evidence that he had been found in possession of the fruits of those offenses. That evidence was not altered by the undisclosed or unavoidably undiscoverable evidence that, Ojile argued, required the exclusion of Tanks‘s testimony and undermined the credibility of his and Hoover‘s testimony. See Ojile, 2012-Ohio-6015, at ¶ 56. Ojile‘s conviction for the February 11 aggravated robbery was based not just on Tanks‘s testimony, but also on the testimony of Hoover. Neither the Brady claim nor the right-to-counsel claim, even if demonstrated, would have required the exclusion of
{¶35} Ojile thus failed to show by clear and convincing evidence that, but for the Brady and right-to-counsel violations, no reasonable factfinder would have found him guilty in the Duncan or Dao aggravated robberies or in the February 11, 2009 aggravated robbery of Weisbrod. We, therefore, hold that the common pleas court had no jurisdiction to entertain those late postconviction claims. See
The Judgment in B-1006797-C is Reversed in Part
{¶36} The common pleas court erred in dismissing for lack of jurisdiction and without an evidentiary hearing the first ground for relief presented in the 2016 postconviction petition filed in the case numbered B-1006797-C. We, therefore, reverse that part of the judgment entered in that case, and we remand for further proceedings consistent with the law and this opinion. In all other respects, we affirm the court‘s judgments.
Judgment accordingly.
MYERS, J., concurs.
MILLER, J., dissents.
Please note:
The court has placed of record its own entry in this case on the date of the release of this opinion.