State v. South

Summary

The Supreme Court of Ohio interprets the interaction among Ohio sentencing statutes governing a third-degree-felony OVI conviction and an R.C. 2941.1413 repeat-offender specification. It holds that the specification requires a mandatory one- to five-year prison term served before and consecutively to any additional sentence, while the underlying OVI conviction permits a discretionary prison term of 9 to 36 months. The court reinstates South’s three-year specification sentence and remands for resentencing on the underlying OVI offense.

Holdings

1. A defendant convicted of a third-degree-felony OVI offense and an R.C. 2941.1413 repeat-offender specification must receive a mandatory prison term of one, two, three, four, or five years for the specification. That term must be served prior to and consecutively to any additional term imposed for the underlying OVI offense.
2. For the underlying third-degree-felony OVI offense, the sentencing court may impose a discretionary definite prison term of 9, 12, 18, 24, 30, or 36 months, or a permitted community-control sanction; it may not impose a mandatory five-year term.
3. An appellate court may not vacate a statutorily authorized specification-related prison term merely because the sentence for the underlying offense is contrary to law; the valid specification term must be reinstated, and only the unlawful underlying-offense term must be resentenced.

Questions Presented

1. Whether the sentencing statutes governing a third-degree-felony OVI conviction and an R.C. 2941.1413 repeat-offender specification can be harmonized.
2. Whether the specification requires a mandatory prison term of one to five years served before and consecutively to any sentence for the underlying OVI offense.
3. Whether the trial court may impose an additional sentence of 9 to 36 months, rather than a five-year sentence, for the underlying third-degree-felony OVI conviction.
4. Whether the court of appeals properly vacated the valid specification-related sentence when it vacated the unlawful sentence for the underlying OVI offense.

Disposition

reversed_and_remanded