State of Ohio, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Shari L. Pearson, Defendant-Appellant. State of Ohio, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Rodriques Hammond, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 14AP-793 | No. 14AP-816
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF OHIO TENTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
September 29, 2015
[Cite as State v. Pearson, 2015-Ohio-3974.]
(C.P.C. No. 13CR-6722) | (C.P.C. No. 13CR-6723) | (REGULAR CALENDAR)
Rendered on September 29, 2015
Ron O‘Brien, Prosecuting Attorney, and Laura R. Swisher, for appellee.
Priya D. Tamilarasan, for appellant Shari L. Pearson.
Timothy Young, Ohio Public Defender, and Nikki Trautman Baszynski, for appellant Rodriques Hammond.
APPEALS from the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas
{1} In these two cases that have been consolidated for purposes of this decision, defendants-appellants, Shari L. Pearson and Rodriques Hammond, both appeal from judgments of conviction entered by the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. For the following reasons, we affirm those judgments.
I. Factual and Procedural Background
{2} On the afternoon of December 17, 2013, Columbus Police Officer Ryan Fowler was patrolling an area in northern Columbus near the intersection of I-71 and Dublin-Granville Road. In that area is a Columbus Inn & Suites motel (“the motel“) that is next door to a Super 8 motel. At that time, the motel had been closed and boarded up after it was declared a nuisance due to numerous drug and prostitution complaints.1 Officer Fowler had parked his unmarked car in the Super 8 parking lot to watch for drug activity when he noticed a рickup truck in the Super 8 parking lot back up to the boundary of the two motels. He saw two people, a man and a woman he later identified as appellants, get out of the truck and go to one of the motel‘s enclosed stairwells at the end of the building. The stairs go up to the second floor, where there is a door that opens up to a hallway with rooms on both sides. There is no access to the first floor from this stairwell.
{3} Officer Fowler observed the appellants go into the stairwell but, because it was enclosed, could not sеe what they did inside the stairwell. Twenty to thirty minutes later, however, the woman came out of the stairwell and returned to the truck, at which time the male driver of the truck got out and went to the same stairwell. Within a couple minutes, the two men came out of the stairwell carrying a largе item which they put in the back of the truck. They then drove the truck out of the parking lot. Officer Fowler contacted marked cruisers and advised them what he observed. The marked police officers stopped the truck. In short time, the motel‘s owner came to the scene and identified the large item in the truck as an AC/heating unit that is typically used in the motel industry and one that he had installed in a few of the motel‘s rooms. (Tr. 53.)
{4} After these events, Officer Fowler went back to the door at the top of the stairwell. He had been aware that the poliсe removed the door‘s handle and boarded the
{5} A Franklin County Grand Jury indicted the appellants with a single count of breaking and entering in violation of
II. The Appeal
{6} Both appellants appeal their convictions. Pearson assigns the following assignment of error:
Appellant‘s conviction was not supported by the sufficiency of the evidence.
{7} Hammond assigns the following errors:
- The trial court erred in finding that the evidence presented by the state was sufficient to prove Mr. Hammond‘s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
- The trial court‘s guilty verdict was in error because it relied upon Mr. Hammond‘s exercise of his Fifth Amendment right as evidence of guilt.
{8} We first address Hammond‘s second assignment of error.
A. Did the Trial Court Rely on Hammond‘s Decision Not to Testify?
{9} Hammond argues in his second assignment of error that the trial court impermissibly relied on his decision not to testify to find him guilty. We disagree.
{10} Specifically, Hammond notes that the trial court, during its oral decision at the end of thе bench trial, wondered why the appellants would:
go into that closed motel with a cluttered and dangerous hall and stairway, stay 15 minutes, give or take, if not to do a theft? You know, then by coincidence they walk out with this bulky unit, put it in their truck and drive away, and there‘s no colorable exрlanation about why, other than that it was as a course of criminal conduct.
{11} The trial court also stated that:
It‘s an important fact that repeatedly Officer Fowler said that he had eyes on the defendants and on the vehicle from the outset. There‘s no testimony that they carried any heating or air-conditioning system into the motel or carried any other bulky object in, suggesting that they somehow took it in there, changed their mind and brought it back out.
(Tr. 89.)
{12} Hammond argues that these comments indicate that the trial court relied on his silence in finding him guilty. We disagree.
{13} We first note that Hammond was tried to thе trial court in a bench trial. In reviewing a bench trial, “an appellate court presumes that a trial court considered nothing but relevant and competent evidence in reaching its verdict,” and this presumption “may be overcome only by an affirmative showing to the сontrary by the appellant.” State v. Wiles, 59 Ohio St.3d 71, 86 (1991). See also State v. Montgomery, 10th Dist. No. 13AP-512, 2014-Ohio-4354, ¶ 20, citing State v. Rowe, 2d Dist. No. 25993, 2014-Ohio-3265, ¶ 45 (“Appellate courts presume that a trial court only considered relevant and admissible evidence in bench trial.“).
{14} We do not interpret the trial court‘s comments as referring to Hammond‘s decision not to testify. Instead, they refer to issues raised at trial but not sufficiently addressed to the trial court‘s satisfaction. State v. Reddy, 192 Ohio App.3d 108, 2010-Ohio-5759, ¶ 59 (8th Dist.). Absent an affirmative showing that the trial court relied on his failure to testify to find him guilty, we presume the trial court did not do so. Accordingly, we overrule Hammond‘s second assignment of error.
B. The Sufficiency of the Evidence
{15} In the rеmaining assignments of error, both appellants contend that their convictions are not supported by sufficient evidence. We disagree.
{16} Sufficiency of the evidence is a legal standard that tests whether the evidence introduced at trial is legally adequate to support a verdict. State v. Thompkins, 78 Ohio St.3d 380, 386 (1997). Whether the evidence is legally sufficient to support a verdict is a question of law. Id.
{18} In this inquiry, appellate courts do not assess whether the state‘s evidence is to be believed, but whether, if believed, the evidence admitted at trial supports the conviction. State v. Yarbrough, 95 Ohio St.3d 227, 2002-Ohio-2126, ¶ 79-80 (evaluation of witness credibility not proper on review for sufficiency of evidence); State v. Bankston, 10th Dist. No. 08AP-668, 2009-Ohio-754, ¶ 4 (noting that “in a sufficiency of the evidence review, an appellate court does not engage in a determination of witness credibility; rather, it essentially assumes the state‘s witnesses testified truthfully and determines if that testimony satisfies each element of the crime.“).
{19} In order to have found appellants guilty of breaking and entering in violation of
1. Did Appellants Trespass with the Purpose to Commit a Theft Offense or any Felony?
{20} Hammond argues in his first assignment of error that the state did not present evidеnce that he actually entered the motel. He contends that the trial court inferred that he entered the motel because he carried the unit out of the stairwell and that the unit was from the motel. He argues that because the state did not prove that the unit actuаlly came from the hotel, the trial court impermissibly stacked inferences. Similarly, Hammond argues that the state failed to prove that he committed a theft offense because it never proved who owned the unit. We reject these arguments.
{22} Hammond further argues that he could have found the unit in a dumpster earlier in thе day and put it in the stairwell enclosure to hide it and that because this type of unit is so common in the motel industry, it could have come from one of the many motels in the same area as this motel. While these may be plausible, a finder of fact is not required to accept a competing inference of innocence if the same circumstances could also permit it to infer guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. State v. Galloway, 10th Dist. No. 03AP-407, 2004-Ohio-557, ¶ 25. Viewing the motel owner‘s testimony in the light most favorable to the state, reasonable minds could conclude that the unit in question сame from the motel. The owner testified that the unit he saw in appellants’ truck was one typically used in motels and that he had “a few” of these units installed in this motel. (Tr. 53.) He identified the unit found in the truck as one of his motel‘s units. Additionally, the officer testified that he observed the unit being taken оut of the motel stairwell and placed into the truck. Accordingly, the state presented sufficient evidence to show that Hammond did commit a theft offense.
{23} Both appellants argue that the state failed to present sufficient evidence to prove how they tresрassed. The trial court found that the appellants used “force, stealth, or deception in getting in there without permission from anyone.” (Tr. 91.) We focus, as the parties do, on whether the element of force has been established.
{24} Force is defined in
{25} Both appellants rely on State v. Howard, 8th Dist. No. 85500, 2005-Ohio-5135, in support of their argument that the statе did not present sufficient evidence of force. We find such reliance to be misplaced. In that case, Howard was convicted of aggravated burglary, which required the state to prove, among other things, that he trespassed by force, stealth, or deception. The appellate court reversed, concluding that in the absence of any evidence indicating how Howard entered the home, the jury could not infer that Howard used force to enter. Id. at ¶ 12-13.
{26} Here, the state demonstrated how appellants entered the motel: through a door that the police had previously boarded up. The only question is whether they used force to gain entrance through that door. Both appellants argue that the state failed to present evidence about the condition of the door before their entry. However, based on the testimony of the officer who described the door as it existed shortly after the incident, we conclude that reasonable minds could infer that appellants had to use force, however slight, to gain entrance through the door. As noted, еven the further opening of an already partially opened door constitutes force. Stump. It is reasonable to infer, given the
3. Conclusion
{27} The state presented sufficient evidence to allow reasonable minds to conclude that aрpellants were guilty of breaking and entering. Accordingly, we overrule Pearson‘s assignment of error and Hammond‘s first assignment of error.
III. Conclusion
{28} Having overruled each of the appellants’ assignments of errors, we affirm both of the judgments of the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas.
TYACK and LUPER SCHUSTER, JJ., concur.
Judgments affirmed.