Notification of post-release controls in Ohio

When postrelease controls, such as time to be spent at a half-way facility or paying restitution after an inmate’s served his/her imposed sentence, aren’t properly included in a defendant’s sentence for a particular crime, the sentence for that offense is void and the defendant is entitled to an entirely new sentencing hearing , the Ohio Supreme Court held yesterday. ( State v. Bezak )

The Court based its decision on the similar 2004 case of State v. Jordon in which it was held that “when a trial court fails to notify an offender about postrelease control at the sentencing hearing but incorporates that notice into its journal entry imposing sentence, it fails to comply with the mandatory provisions of Revised Code § 2929.19(B)(3)(c) and (d); sentence must be vacated and the matter remanded for resentencing.”

Dissenting opinions centered around State v. Saxon, which differed from the current situation in that there were multiple convictions in Saxon.

Justice Lanzinger in her separate dissenting opinion, also made note of recently enacted legislation which provides a statutory process through which trial courts that have failed to include proper notification of postrelease control when originally sentencing an offender may now employ by means of an entry in the case record, but that that provision must be undertaken before the offender completes his term of imprisonment. (See ORC § 2929.191).