State v. Windsor

Summary

The Ohio Second District Court of Appeals affirmed Joseph Glenn Windsor’s convictions for attempted murder, felonious assault, and discharging a firearm on or near prohibited premises. The court rejected challenges to the indictment, verdict forms, violent-offender designation, authentication of video evidence, sufficiency and manifest weight of the evidence, and allied-offense merger. The provided text ends during the court’s discussion of whether the firearm-discharge offense merged with attempted murder.

Holdings

1. The indictment adequately charged attempted murder because it tracked the attempt statute, alleged the required purposeful mens rea, identified the underlying murder statute, and gave Windsor notice of the nature of the offense. Failure to object before trial waived the claim absent plain error, and no plain error occurred.
2. The verdict forms were not defective. R.C. 2945.75 does not apply to attempted murder because attempted murder has a single prescribed offense level, and a verdict form need not include the statutory definition of the offense.
3. The trial court properly designated Windsor a violent offender because a valid conviction for attempted murder falls within the statutory definition of “violent offender.”
4. The videos were properly authenticated, and counsel was not ineffective for failing to object because an objection would have been futile.
5. The State presented sufficient, competent, and credible evidence supporting the convictions, and the convictions were not against the manifest weight of the evidence.
6. The offenses did not merge because discharging a firearm on or near a prohibited premises and attempted murder were offenses of dissimilar import involving separate and identifiable harms and victims.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the indictment adequately charged attempted murder and properly stated the offense level.
2. Whether the attempted-murder verdict form was defective under R.C. 2945.75 or was required to include statutory offense definitions.
3. Whether the trial court improperly designated Windsor a violent offender.
4. Whether trial counsel was ineffective for failing to object to allegedly unauthenticated surveillance videos and whether admission of the videos constituted plain error.
5. Whether the convictions were supported by sufficient evidence and were consistent with the manifest weight of the evidence.
6. Whether discharging a firearm on or near a prohibited premises was an allied offense of similar import to attempted murder requiring merger.

Disposition

affirmed