Summary
The Ohio Second District Court of Appeals affirmed Lance A. Irvin’s convictions for murder and tampering with evidence. The court held that the burden-shifting amendments to Ohio’s self-defense statute did not apply retroactively to an offense committed before the amendments’ effective date, rejected a constitutional challenge to violent-offender registration, upheld the verdict against a manifest-weight challenge, and affirmed the denial of Irvin’s motion to suppress. The court certified a conflict with decisions of the Twelfth District concerning the retroactive application of the self-defense amendments.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether H.B. 228's amendments to Ohio's self-defense statute, including shifting the burden to the prosecution, applied to an offense committed before the statute's effective date but tried afterward.
- Whether enrollment in Ohio's Violent Offender Database under S.B. 231 constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
- Whether Irvin's murder and felonious-assault convictions were against the manifest weight of the evidence based on his self-defense claim.
- Whether police subjected Irvin to custodial interrogation after he invoked his right to counsel by asking about his claimed head injury.
Holdings
- H.B. 228 did not apply to an offense committed before March 28, 2019, even though the trial occurred after that date, because the General Assembly did not expressly make the amendment retroactive.
- Requiring a person convicted of murder to enroll in the Violent Offender Database under S.B. 231 does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
- Irvin's murder and felonious-assault convictions were not against the manifest weight of the evidence because the jury reasonably credited eyewitness testimony that Irvin returned with a gun and shot Jesse while Jesse was retreating with his hands raised.
- Police did not subject Irvin to custodial interrogation after he invoked his right to counsel because their questions were limited to investigating and documenting his claimed head injury and were not designed to elicit, or reasonably likely to elicit, incriminating responses.
Key quotations
“Thus, H.B. 228’s change to the burden of proof is not applicable to an alleged crime that occurred before March 28, 2019 but which came to trial on or after March 28, 2019.” (¶ 26)
“Thus, the questions were not designed to elicit, or were not reasonably likely to elicit, an incriminating response from Irvin.” (¶ 51)
Factual background
After an altercation at Joseph Redavide's home on November 14, 2017, Irvin returned to the residence with a firearm and shot Jesse Redavide in the chest at close range. Three eyewitnesses testified that Jesse had his hands raised and was backing away when Irvin fired. Irvin claimed Jesse had attacked him and struck him with a rifle, causing Irvin to act in self-defense; he also testified that he discarded the firearm and that police later questioned him about his head injury after he invoked his right to counsel.
Procedural history
Irvin was indicted in April 2018 on murder, felonious-assault, and tampering-with-evidence charges, with firearm specifications. The trial court denied his motion to suppress, and a jury convicted him in April 2019. The trial court merged the murder and felonious-assault counts for sentencing and imposed an aggregate prison term of 20 years and six months to life, along with violent-offender database enrollment. Irvin timely appealed, and the court of appeals affirmed all challenged rulings while certifying a conflict to the Supreme Court of Ohio concerning the retroactive application of H.B. 228's self-defense burden-shifting provisions.