11th District Court of Appeals

Opinions always slow down for a few weeks after a big quarterly release.  They’re starting to dribble back in this week, but it’s still a slow trickle.

State v. Slabaugh, 2015-Ohio-1607
Slabaugh pled guilty to three felony OVIs and Endangering Children.  He got a total of five years in prison.  Four months after that, in State v. Owen, the supreme court applied the HB 86 sentencing reforms and the maximum sentence went down to three years.  Ten months after that change, he appealed his sentence.  Too late, and there was no reason he couldn’t have timely appealed and raised the same arguments that worked for Owen.  Wright, Rice.  O’Toole dissents, she would have granted the delayed appeal.

State v. Dellick, 2015-Ohio-1608
A jury convicted Dellick of Trespass in a Habitation and Felonious Assault, but found him not guilty of Aggravated Burglary and Kidnapping. He and his wife were having some problems, so she took their daughter to stay at her ex-husband’s house for a while. Dellick showed up, choked her unconscious, stripped her and put her in the bathtub with the shower on. He told her she was going to die, and that he’d make it look like she killed herself. Then, while wearing blue rubber gloves, he cut the inside of her thigh several times.  He argues manifest weight of the evidence, seemingly because of a lack of scientific evidence.  But scientific evidence isn’t necessary. He also argues that the inconsistent verdicts show that the jury lost its way.  But inconsistent verdicts are ok. Grendell, Cannon, Rice.