State v. SchoensteinState v. Schoenstein
Michael T. Gmoser, Butler County Prosecuting Attorney, and John C. Heinkel, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellee.
Christopher Bazeley, for
M. POWELL, P.J.
{1} Appellant, Michael Schoenstein, appeals the Butler County Court of Common Pleas’ determination of his jail-time credit. For the following reasons, we affirm the trial court‘s calculation.
{2} Appellant was indicted on March 16, 2016, in Butler County on two counts of felony nonsupport of dependents (the Nonsupport of Dependents Case). Appellant‘s arraignment was scheduled for September 12, 2016. At that time, appellant was being held in the Clermont County jail, serving a sentence in an unrelated matter for which he would be incarcerated until January of 2017 (the Clermont
{3} At sentencing in the Nonsupport of Dependents Case on November 7, 2016, the court imposed a sentence of five years of community control. The court ordered appellant to report to the Butler County probation department after being released from Clermont County. The court further informed appellant that the failure to report to Butler County would be a violation of his community control, and the court would issue a capias for his arrest.
{4} At the sentencing hearing, the court also calculated the number of days between appellant‘s scheduled arraignment on September 12 and the day of sentencing on November 7 to be “57 days of jail-time credit.” In the subsequent sentencing entry, the trial court did not mention any jail-time credit. Neither the state nor appellant objected to the calculation of jail-time credit at the sentencing hearing or appealed the court‘s entry omitting any mention of jail-time credit.
{5} Appellant absconded from Butler County‘s supervision and went to Kentucky. In May of 2017, a notice of community control violation was filed in the Nonsupport of Dependents Case and a capias was issued for appellant‘s arrest. The capias was served on appellant on April 13, 2022.
{6} On April 25, 2022, the court held a hearing on appellant‘s community control violation. The court revoked appellant‘s community control and imposed a nine-month prison sentence “with credit for 21 days as of today.” The court‘s sentencing entry reflected the pronounced jail-time credit of 21 days.
{7} Appellant now appeals the trial court‘s calculation of his jail-time credit, raising a single assignment of error for our review.
{8} Assignment of Error No. 1:
{9} THE TRIAL COURT ERRED BY NOT CREDITING SCHOENSTEIN HIS LAWFUL NUMBER OF DAYS OF JAILTIME CREDIT.
{10} In his assignment of error, appellant argues that he is entitled to 79 days of jail-time credit against the prison term imposed in the Nonsupport of Dependents Case. Appellant‘s calculation includes (1) 57 days as announced by the trial court at the 2016 sentencing hearing, (2) seven additional days for the time he was incarcerated prior to his community control violation hearing, and (3) 15 additional days related to appellant‘s holding time before being transported to prison. The state argues that appellant is only entitled to nine days of jail-time credit. We find that because appellant has failed to meet his burden of showing that the trial court erred in
I. STANDARD OF REVIEW
{11} Jail-time credit is a concept rooted in the Equal Protection clauses of the Ohio and United States Constitutions and codified in
{12} This court has held that “a trial court‘s failure to properly calculate an offender‘s jail-time credit and to include the amount of jail-time credit in the body of the offender‘s sentencing entry amounts to plain error.” State v. Clark, 12th Dist. Clermont No. CA2021-06-030, 2022-Ohio-46, ¶ 10. However, on appeal, the appellant “bears the burden of showing that the trial court erred in the jail-time calculation,” and if no miscalculation is “apparent from the record, any claimed error must be overruled.” State v. Hall, 8th Dist. Cuyahoga No. 95216, 2011-Ohio-221, ¶ 10.
II. THE PRONOUNCED 57 DAY CREDIT
{13} In support of his argument that he is entitled to the 57 days of credit announced by the trial court during the November 7, 2016 sentencing hearing, appellant points us to
{14} Appellant fails to recognize that by its plain language,
{15}
{16} The same logic applied by other Ohio courts is applicable to our understanding of
{17} Further, “[i]t is well-established that a court speaks only through its journal entries and not by oral pronouncement or through decisions.” State v. Smith, 12th Dist. Butler No. CA2009-02-038, 2010-Ohio-1721, ¶ 59. A sanction “is imposed by the sentencing entry, not by what is said on the record during the sentencing hearing.” State v. Starr, 12th Dist. Clermont Nos. CA2018-09-065 and CA2018-09-066, 2019-Ohio-2081, ¶ 12. Despite the trial court‘s oral statement regarding 57 days of jail-time credit, appellant is not entitled to this credit because it was not reflected in the sentencing entry.
{18} This omission by the trial court may have been intentional or it may have been an oversight. At the original sentencing hearing, the court discussed with defense counsel that appellant was being held by the Clermont County Municipal Court on a separate matter between the dates of his arraignment on September 12, 2016, and his sentencing hearing on November 7, 2016.3 The court calculated the amount of time between those dates to be “57 days of jail-time credit.” However, “Ohio courts have consistently held that jail-time credit is to be applied to an inmate‘s sentence only for confinement related to the specific case in which that sentence was imposed.” State v. McClellan, 12th Dist. Preble No. CA2018-10-014, 2019-Ohio-5034, ¶ 14. This means that there is no jail-time credit “for time served on unrelated offenses, even if that time served runs concurrently during the pre-detention phase of another matter.” State v. Edmonds, 12th Dist. Warren No. CA2014-03- 045, 2015-Ohio-2733, ¶ 12. Thus, if the trial court‘s omission of jail-time credit in the sentencing entry was intentional, it was proper, as appellant was not entitled to credit for the days he was held in
III. THE SEVEN DAY CREDIT
{19} Appellant claims that he is entitled to jail-time credit for the number of days between the date he was reincarcerated pursuant to the community control capias and the date of his community control revocation hearing. His community control revocation hearing took place on April 25, 2022, with the sentencing entry filed one day later. The record shows that appellant was arrested pursuant to the community control violation capias on April 13, 2022. Appellant, however, asserts in his brief that he was reincarcerated on April 18, 2022.
{20} Regardless of the date of appellant‘s return to custody, appellant was entitled to jail-time credit for the days he was confined prior to his revocation hearing on April 25, 2022.
IV. THE FIFTEEN DAY CREDIT
{21} Appellant also asserts in his brief that he is entitled to 15 additional days of credit. Appellant states that “the Butler County Sheriff transported [him] into the custody of the Ohio Department of Corrections between May 9, 2022 – [sic] allowing for another 15 days of jail-time credit.” It is unclear from appellant‘s brief what range of dates he attempts to reference. In the court‘s entry revoking community control, the trial court credited appellant with 21 days of credit “along with future custody days while the defendant awaits transportation to the appropriate state institution.” Thus, we can only guess that appellant argues for credit for the number of days between his sentencing on April 25, 2022, and the day he was taken into custody of the Ohio Department of Corrections.
{22} Regardless of this amount of time, the Ohio Supreme Court has found that it is the jailer‘s duty to reduce a sentence in accordance with the entry made by the trial court. State v. Berger, 17 Ohio App. 3d 8, 11 (1984); see also
V. CONCLUSION
{23} Appellant failed to meet his burden of showing that the trial court erred in its calculation of jail-time credit and that the calculation prejudiced him. It is “axiomatic that in order for there to be reversible error, there must be prejudice to the appellant.” Barton, 2013-Ohio-307, ¶ 9. If anything, appellant received a small windfall by receiving 21 days of jail-time credit when it appears he was only entitled to 12.5 As no miscalculation of jail-time credit is apparent from the record, appellant‘s assignment of error is overruled.
{24} Judgment affirmed.
S. POWELL and HENDRICKSON, JJ., concur.