THE STATE OF OHIO, APPELLANT, v. TAYLOR, APPELLEE.
No. 2018-0797
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO
Decided July 2, 2020
Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-3514
DeWine, J.
Criminal law—Court costs—R.C. 2947.23(C)—Ohio’s statutory scheme does not require a trial court to consider the defendant’s present or future ability to pay court costs when ruling on the defendant’s motion to waive, suspend, or modify court costs under R.C. 2947.23(C)—Court of appeals’ judgment reversed and cause remanded.
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State v. Taylor, Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-3514.]
NOTICE
This slip opinion is subject to formal revision before it is published in an advance sheet of the Ohio Official Reports. Readers are requested to promptly notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Court of Ohio, 65 South Front Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, of any typographical or other formal errors in the opinion, in order that corrections may be made before the opinion is published.
SLIP OPINION NO. 2020-OHIO-3514
THE STATE OF OHIO, APPELLANT, v. TAYLOR, APPELLEE.
[Until this opinion appears in the Ohio Official Reports advance sheets, it may be cited as State v. Taylor, Slip Opinion No. 2020-Ohio-3514.]
Criminal law—Court costs—
(No. 2018-0797—Submitted January 7, 2020—Decided July 2, 2020.)
APPEAL from the Court of Appeals for Montgomery County, No. 27539, 2018-Ohio-1649.
{¶ 1} Ohio’s statutory scheme makes a trial court’s imposition of court costs on a convicted defendant mandatory but grants the court discretion to waive, suspend, or modify the costs. In making this discretionary determination, must the court consider the defendant’s present or future ability to pay the costs? Because the statutory scheme imposes no such obligation, we say no. The Second District Court of Appeals saw things differently, so we reverse.
Taylor is convicted of murder and ordered to pay court costs
{¶ 2} Darren Taylor was convicted of two counts of murder for his involvement in an attempted pawn-shop robbery that resulted in the deaths of a store clerk and one of Taylor’s accomplices. For his crimes the trial court sentenced him to 36 years to life in prison. The court also ordered him to pay restitution and court costs. His convictions were affirmed on direct appeal. State v. Taylor, 2d Dist. Montgomery No. 25764, 2014-Ohio-2550, ¶ 11.
{¶ 3} Later, Taylor moved to vacate or suspend the restitution order and court costs on the grounds that he was indigent and received only $19 dollars per month in prison wages. The trial court denied the motion and Taylor’s subsequent request for the court to reconsider its judgment.
{¶ 4} Taylor then appealed to the Second District. The court of appeals affirmed the trial court’s judgment regarding restitution. But, relying on its precedent in State v. Copeland, 2d Dist. Montgomery No. 26842, 2016-Ohio-7797, ¶ 11, the court in a two-to-one decision reversed as to court costs. “The trial court abused its discretion,” it held, “by overruling Taylor’s motion to vacate and/or suspend court costs without considering his indigency and ability to pay.” 2018-Ohio-1649, ¶ 19. It remanded the case to the trial court for the appropriate consideration.
{¶ 5} We accepted the state’s appeal to address whether a trial court must consider a defendant’s present or future ability to pay when ruling on a motion to vacate, suspend, or modify court costs under
Ohio’s statutory scheme does not require a trial court to consider a defendant’s ability to pay when ruling on a motion to waive, suspend, or modify costs
{¶ 6} By statute, the imposition of court costs on all convicted defendants is mandatory.
{¶ 7} But
{¶ 8} The statutory language provides no explicit criteria that a court should use in deciding whether to waive, suspend, or modify costs. And that provides the occasion for this appeal—what criteria, if any, must a court use in making that decision?
{¶ 9} Taylor doesn’t deny that the imposition of court costs is mandatory, regardless of a defendant’s ability to pay. Nor does he deny that the statute imposes no explicit criteria in assessing a motion to waive, suspend, or modify court costs. Nevertheless, he argues that an implicit requirement to consider ability to pay can be found in the broader statutory structure. In deciding whether this is so, we are mindful that the proper role of a court is to construe a statute as written without adding criteria not supported by the text. State ex rel. Russo v. McDonnell, 110 Ohio St.3d 144, 2006-Ohio-3459, 852 N.E.2d 145, ¶ 50. Thus, barring some textual basis, we will not read into the statute a requirement that courts consider a defendant’s ability to pay. As we explain below, Taylor fails to show that the statutory language imposes any such obligation.
{¶ 10} Taylor first argues that
{¶ 11} On first pass, we are skeptical of this conclusion because it is in tension with a statutory scheme that requires court costs to be imposed on all convicted defendants regardless of their ability to pay or indigency status. If present or future ability to pay is a condition for retaining costs, it doesn’t make much sense for it not to be a condition for imposing costs in the first place. But it plainly is not. See White, 103 Ohio St.3d 580, 2004-Ohio-5989, 817 N.E.2d 39, at ¶ 8;
{¶ 12} Moreover, Taylor’s argument only works if consideration of ability to pay is the only thing that could make rational sense of the statutory language. But it’s not. Indeed, in the abstract, there are many other criteria that can equally justify a decision to waive, suspend, or modify the imposition of costs in a particular case. A court might, for instance, look to whether the costs are unfairly excessive given the degree of wrongdoing. Or a court might look to whether the costs impose a hardship on third parties. Or maybe a court would conclude that
{¶ 13} The point is that an ability-to-pay requirement is no more implied by the statute than any other of a range of plausible candidates that could make sense of a court’s decision to waive, suspend, or modify costs. Indeed, this case illustrates a basic point about statutory interpretation—courts should tread carefully in finding implied conditions in statutes, because in doing so they run the risk of not just construing a statute but enlarging it. See Lamie v. United States Trustee, 540 U.S. 526, 538, 124 S.Ct. 1023, 157 L.Ed.2d 1024 (2004). The danger in finding implied criteria in a statute is that there can be a tendency to find what one wants to find rather than what is actually there.
{¶ 14} The dissent falls into that trap and concludes that the purpose of
{¶ 15} Taylor also points to statutory provisions concerning the collection of court costs. For instance,
{¶ 16} Finally, Taylor argues that if there are no criteria in the statute, then the decision to waive, suspend, or modify costs becomes just a matter of trial-court whim—anything goes. We disagree. It is a basic principle of our legal system that a trial court’s decision must not be arbitrary and cannot be based on considerations wholly unrelated to the decision it is tasked with making. A trial court could not, for instance, deny a motion to waive costs based on the flip of a coin or the color of a defendant’s hair or because it is Tuesday. Neither could a court adopt a standing order to reject all such motions, as that would be opting out of any sort of
Constitutional limits do not make a defendant’s ability to pay a required criterion when a court rules on a defendant’s motion to waive, suspend, or modify costs
{¶ 17} Taylor maintains that unless we mandate that trial courts consider a defendant’s ability to pay, the statutory scheme is constitutionally infirm. Under his theory, an indigent defendant may feel compelled to forego his right to a jury trial or to certain process rights, such as the right to subpoena witnesses, in order to reduce the costs of prosecution that might later be imposed. To avoid this constitutional problem, he argues, we should import consideration of ability to pay into the statutory scheme.
{¶ 18} For support, Taylor looks to the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Fuller v. Oregon, 417 U.S. 40, 94 S.Ct. 2116, 40 L.Ed.2d 642 (1974). Fuller dealt with an Oregon statute that allowed the state to recoup the costs of appointed counsel as a condition of probation when a defendant, indigent at the time of trial, was later able to make payments towards those costs. Id. at 41. The Supreme Court upheld the statute. But in doing so, the court noted that any doubts about the constitutionality of the statutory scheme were minimized because defendants for whom repayment would work a “manifest hardship” were exempt from having to make payments as a condition of probation. Id. at 53. From the Supreme Court’s comments in Fuller, Taylor argues that a defendant’s ability to pay must figure into a trial court’s decision to waive, modify, or suspend court costs.
{¶ 19} We note that this court previously rejected a similar argument, although framed in terms of equal protection. See White, 103 Ohio St.3d 580, 2004-Ohio-5989, 817 N.E.2d 393, at ¶ 11-13. There, we noted that because criminal defendants are afforded the same rights as other debtors to exempt assets from collection, there was no constitutional infirmity in the statutes we considered. Id. at ¶ 13; see
{¶ 20} The Fuller decision on which Taylor relies also voiced skepticism about the sort of argument that Taylor presents here. Indeed, the court explicitly criticized the California Supreme Court’s decision in In re Allen, 71 Cal.2d 388, 391, 78 Cal.Rptr. 207, 455 P.2d 143 (1969), which held that a California statute allowing the recovery of appointed-counsel fees as a condition of probation was unconstitutional because it might chill the defendant’s exercise of his Sixth Amendment rights. Fuller at 51-52. As the Fuller court put it, “[t]he fact that an indigent who accepts state-appointed legal representation knows that he might someday be required to repay the costs of these services in no way affects his eligibility to obtain counsel.” Id. at 53. Similarly, here, the fact that a defendant may later be required to pay the costs of prosecution in no way denies him his right to a jury trial or other process rights. So, Fuller offers little support for Taylor’s arguments.
{¶ 21} If anything, Taylor’s constitutional argument is far weaker than the one the United States Supreme Court rejected in Fuller. To start, we have held that the
{¶ 22} It’s true that a court may require a defendant to perform community service in lieu of monetary payments toward the debt.
{¶ 23} Further, as this court explained in White, other safeguards protect criminal defendants who owe civil debts on the same terms as other civil debtors. White, 103 Ohio St.3d 580, 2004-Ohio-5989, 817 N.E.2d 393, at ¶ 13.
{¶ 24} In short, Taylor is on similar footing with other civil debtors insofar as he doesn’t stand to lose his freedom for failure to pay his court costs and because he can take advantage of the same protections afforded to other civil debtors by exempting certain assets from collection. There is no reason that Taylor should be constitutionally entitled to receive more protections than other civil debtors just because his debt came about through criminal-court proceedings rather than through some other mechanism. We reject Taylor’s claim that Ohio’s statutory scheme is constitutionally infirm because it does not require a court to consider a defendant’s present or future ability to pay when ruling on a motion to waive, suspend, or modify court costs.
Conclusion
{¶ 25} For these reasons, we reverse the judgment of the Second District Court of Appeals and remand the matter to the court of appeals for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.
Judgment reversed and cause remanded.
KENNEDY and FRENCH, JJ., concur.
O’CONNOR, C.J., concurs, with an opinion.
FISCHER, J., concurs in judgment only.
STEWART, J., dissents, with an opinion joined by DONNELLY, J.
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O’CONNOR, C.J., concurring.
{¶ 26} I agree with the majority that the plain language of
{¶ 27} Putting aside the details of appellee Darren Taylor’s case, I also write to note that there are many good reasons why a trial court should consider a defendant’s ability to pay and why the General Assembly should amend
{¶ 28} After a criminal trial, the court costs imposed on a defendant under
{¶ 29} First, requiring a defendant to pay court costs when the defendant lacks the ability to do so creates other costs for the state in the form of the state’s time and resources spent pursuing various methods of collecting the costs from the defendant. Those methods can include a court’s conducting hearings to determine whether the court should order the defendant to perform community service in lieu of payment,
{¶ 30} Requiring a defendant to pay court costs when the defendant lacks the ability to do so also imposes significant unintended consequences on the defendant personally. The brief submitted in this case by amicus curiae NAACP Legal Defense & Educational Fund, Inc., explains many of these unintended consequences. For example, the payment of court costs is often required as a condition of the defendant’s community-control sentence. See, e.g., State v. Williams, 5th Dist. Stark No. 2015CA00045, 2015-Ohio-2868, ¶ 2; State v. Stevens, 2d Dist. Greene No. 2014-CA-10, 2015-Ohio-1051, ¶ 5; State v. Estep, 4th Dist. Gallia No. 03CA22, 2004-Ohio-1747, ¶ 2. Although a defendant’s failure to pay court costs may not lead to the defendant’s punishment by jail time, Ohio’s courts of appeals have determined that a defendant’s failure to pay court costs “may * * * be considered as a factor in determining whether to modify or revoke community control for other violations,” Stevens at ¶ 5, fn.2; see also Estep at ¶ 11 (same). A defendant’s failure to pay may also expose the defendant to a longer or more restrictive community-control sentence. See
{¶ 31} Making matters worse, a defendant’s violation of community control conditions due to the defendant’s inability to pay court costs might make the defendant ineligible for many important federal benefits and programs specifically designed to help the poor, including the following:
- the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, see
42 U.S.C. 608(a)(9)(A)(ii) ; - supplemental-security-income benefits for people who are over the age of 65, blind, or disabled, see
42 U.S.C. 1382(e)(4)(A)(ii) ; - public housing, see
42 U.S.C. 1437d(l)(9)(A)(2) ; - low-income housing assistance, see
42 U.S.C. 1437f(d)(1)(B)(v) ; and - the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance program, see
42 U.S.C. 402(x)(1)(A)(v) .2
{¶ 32} Finally, Ohio law permits its clerks of courts to charge a defendant interest on the amount of the defendant’s unpaid court costs.
which the defendant is ineligible for the federal benefits and programs noted above). During that time, the outstanding debt can also negatively impact a defendant’s credit rating, making it harder for the defendant to obtain loans. See Alexes Harris, Heather Evans & Katherine Beckett, Drawing Blood from Stones: Legal Debt and Social Inequality in the Contemporary United States, 115 Am.J.Soc. 1753, 1780-1781 (2010).
{¶ 33} The majority opinion suggests that denying a defendant’s motion to waive court costs is unlikely to actually place any burden on the defendant because the defendant has the same legal protections provided to any other civil debtor. But that assertion fails to account for the problems noted above. The burden is real. Each of these harsh realities impedes a defendant’s ability to reintegrate into society, and together, those impediments can make the challenge of reintegration insurmountable. The General Assembly should, with the support of Ohio’s courts, address this economic black hole and provide what common sense calls for: statutory criteria should be established requiring a trial court ruling on a defendant’s motion to waive, suspend, or modify court costs to take the defendant’s ability to pay into consideration.
{¶ 34} For these reasons, I respectfully concur.
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STEWART, J., dissenting.
{¶ 35} Appellant, the state of Ohio, contends that a trial court is not required to consider a convicted defendant’s present or future ability to pay court costs when ruling on the defendant’s motion to waive, suspend, or modify the payment of court costs. The state argues that a defendant’s ability to pay is not a necessary consideration because neither the language of
A defendant’s ability to pay court costs is a vital, if not determinative, consideration when ruling on a motion to waive, suspend, or modify the payment of court costs under R.C. 2947.23(C)
{¶ 36} By itself, the plain language of
{¶ 37} But even the majority concedes that implicit in
{¶ 38} We have said that judgments imposing court costs are civil in nature and that court costs are to be neither viewed as nor imposed as punishment for the criminal conduct that led to the defendant’s conviction and obligation to pay court costs. See id. At bottom,
{¶ 39} Additionally, if a trial court’s consideration of a defendant’s ability to
{¶ 40} In this case, the majority justifies its decision based on the language of
{¶ 41} It is understandable that the majority would want to focus on the text of a statute when determining the legislative intent behind the statute. However, in situations like this one, in which the legislature has authorized courts to exercise their authority but is silent on how courts may exercise their authority, the only possible way for us to know how the courts may appropriately act is by considering the
There is a textual basis for requiring a trial court to consider ability to pay
{¶ 42} I also agree with Taylor’s argument that the legislature’s decision to grant trial courts continuing jurisdiction to waive, suspend, or modify the payment of court costs shows that the legislature intended for trial courts to consider ability to pay. When interpreting statutes, we recognize that “ ‘the General Assembly is not presumed to do a vain or useless thing, and that when language is inserted in a statute it is inserted to accomplish some definite purpose.’ ” State v. Wilson, 77 Ohio St.3d 334, 336, 673 N.E.2d 1347 (1997), quoting State ex rel. Cleveland Elec. Illum. Co. v. Euclid, 169 Ohio St. 476, 479, 159 N.E.2d 756 (1959). Regarding
{¶ 43} The majority rejects this argument as being “in tension with a statutory scheme that requires court costs to be imposed on all convicted defendants regardless of their ability to pay or indigency status.” Majority opinion at ¶ 11. The majority claims that “[i]f present or future ability to pay is a condition for retaining costs, it doesn’t make much sense for it not to be a condition for imposing costs in the first place.” Id. at ¶ 11. What the majority fails to acknowledge is that there is a difference between a judgment recognizing that a debt is owed and a judgment directing whether and to what extent the payment of that debt must be enforced. See Piazza v. R. & S. Sarver, Inc., 17 Ohio App.3d 177, 478 N.E.2d 256 (8th Dist.1984), syllabus;
{¶ 44} Furthermore, when considering the purpose of
{¶ 45} The majority also claims that Taylor’s textual argument works only if a requirement to consider ability to pay is the only thing that could make rational sense of the statutory language. The majority then notes several other considerations that might justify a court’s decision to grant or deny a motion to waive, suspend, or modify the payment of costs. But every example that the majority gives is either clearly related to a defendant’s ability to pay or would be fundamentally arbitrary.
{¶ 46} For instance, a trial court should not consider whether the court costs imposed are “unfairly excessive given the degree of wrongdoing,” majority opinion at ¶ 12, because the imposition of court costs is not a penalty in a criminal case and the defendant’s “degree of wrongdoing” is irrelevant to the court’s decision. Any decision to waive, suspend, or modify the payment of court costs that is tied to the court’s perception of the gravity of the defendant’s crime is misguided. Likewise, consider the implications of the majority’s suggestion that an appropriate consideration could be whether a defendant’s obligation to pay court costs might impose a hardship on a third party. While that is certainly something that a trial court might consider, it would be relevant only in relation to the defendant’s financial status, more broadly called his ability to pay. That is, if the third party is the defendant’s dependent child, then the question whether the payment of court costs would impose a hardship would naturally involve whether the obligation would interfere with the defendant’s ability to provide for his child. But it should go without saying that the child would be adversely impacted only if the defendant lacked the ability to both provide for the child and pay court costs. If the defendant had the ability to do both, we can assume that the child would not be adversely affected.
{¶ 47} The majority’s final example is equally unpersuasive. It suggests that a court could reasonably determine that “
Constitutional concerns
{¶ 48} I also agree with Taylor that if a defendant’s ability to pay is not a necessary consideration under
{¶ 49} Indeed, in Fuller v. Oregon, 417 U.S. 40, 94 S.Ct. 2116, 40 L.Ed.2d 642 (1974), the United States Supreme Court upheld Oregon’s costs-recoupment statute against a Sixth Amendment right-to-counsel challenge. The court concluded, “Oregon’s legislation is tailored to impose an obligation only upon those with a foreseeable ability to meet it, and to enforce that obligation only against those who actually become able to meet it without hardship.” Id. at 54. Thus, the Supreme Court upheld the statute precisely because it required courts to consider a defendant’s ability to pay prior to ordering the defendant to pay the costs. Conveniently, the majority fails to consider this aspect of the court’s decision in Fuller in declaring that the lack of an ability-to-pay requirement in
{¶ 50} While the majority is correct in its assertion that some “safeguards protect criminal defendants who owe civil debts on the same terms as other civil debtors,” majority opinion at ¶ 23, it does not consider that court-costs debtors are subject to disadvantages that other civil debtors are not. For example, as the concurring opinion points out, the failure to pay court costs can in some cases lead to the denial of federal benefits and participation in federal programs designed to help the poor. Other civil debtors would not face these exclusions.
{¶ 51} Moreover, in the case of court costs owed by prisoners, it is not clear whether any of the collection exemptions found in
{¶ 52} Many of the exemptions found in
Conclusion
{¶ 53} For the foregoing reasons, I would hold that
DONNELLY, J., concurs in the foregoing opinion.
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Mathias H. Heck Jr., Montgomery County Prosecuting Attorney, and Andrew T. French, Assistant Prosecuting Attorney, for appellant.
Timothy Young, Ohio Public Defender, and Patrick T. Clark, Assistant Public Defender, for appellee.
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