State v. Reyes , 2022 Ohio 4046 ( 2022 )

[Cite as State v. Reyes, 2022-Ohio-4046.]
IN THE COURT OF APPEALS OF OHIO
ELEVENTH APPELLATE DISTRICT
PORTAGE COUNTY
STATE OF OHIO, CASE NO. 2022-P-0018
Plaintiff-Appellee,
Criminal Appeal from the
- vs - Court of Common Pleas
WALTER E. REYES,
Trial Court No. 2009 CR 00623
Defendant-Appellant.
OPINION
Decided: November 14, 2022
Judgment: Affirmed
Victor V. Vigluicci, Portage County Prosecutor, and Pamela J. Holder, Assistant
Prosecutor, 241 South Chestnut Street, Ravenna, OH 44266 (For Plaintiff-Appellee).
Walter E. Reyes, pro se, PID# A590-238, Richland Correctional Institution, 1001
Olivesburg Road, P.O. Box 8107, Mansfield, OH 44905 (Defendant-Appellant).
THOMAS R. WRIGHT, P.J.
{¶1} Appellant, Walter E. Reyes, appeals the judgment denying his
postconviction motion to reclassify him under Megan’s Law. We affirm.
{¶2} In June 2010, Reyes pleaded guilty to four counts of rape, committed
between October 1, 2006, and January 1, 2007, and a subsequent count of violating a
protection order. The trial court sentenced Reyes on July 8, 2010, to an aggregate 30-
year prison term. Reyes was classified a Tier III Sex Offender under the Adam Walsh
Act, in effect at the time of Reyes’ sentencing. Megan’s Law, however, was in effect at
the time Reyes committed the offenses.
{¶3} In 2013, this court denied Reyes leave to file a delayed direct appeal and,
in 2014, upheld the trial court's denial of Reyes’ first motion to withdraw his guilty pleas.
State v. Reyes, 11th Dist. Portage No. 2013-P-0012, 2013-Ohio-1493; State v. Reyes,
11th Dist. Portage No. 2013-P-0049, 2014-Ohio-1679. In 2015, this court upheld the trial
court’s denial of Reyes’ untimely postconviction relief petition and, in 2016, upheld the
trial court’s denial of Reyes’ third motion to withdraw his guilty pleas. State v. Reyes,
2015-Ohio-5344, 55 N.E.3d 485 (11th Dist.); State v. Reyes, 11th Dist. Portage No. 2016-
P-0010, 2016-Ohio-5673.
{¶4} Most recently, in 2021, this court upheld the trial court’s denial of Reyes’
motion to vacate his Tier III Sex Offender classification. State v. Reyes, 11th Dist. Portage
No. 2021-P-0014, 2021-Ohio-3478. In that appeal, Reyes argued that the trial court’s
failure to vacate his Adam Walsh Act classification under its continuing jurisdiction to
correct void judgments was an abuse of discretion. Id. at ¶ 6. We rejected this argument
because “any error in his classification, including any constitutional violation, would result
in a voidable judgment.” Id. at ¶ 9. We upheld the trial court’s decision because “Reyes’
classification was not void; his motion, construed as a postconviction relief petition, was
untimely; and he [had] not established the statutory conditions for the trial court to
consider a second petition.” Id. at ¶ 15. Moreover, “[b]ecause Reyes could have
challenged the trial court’s retroactive application of the Adam Walsh Act in a timely direct
appeal from his conviction, any review of that issue in a postconviction relief petition [was]
barred by res judicata.” Id. at ¶ 16.
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{¶5} The matter now before us is the trial court’s denial of Reyes’ pro se motion
to reclassify him under Megan’s Law, from which Reyes advances one assignment of
error:
The trial court abused its discretion when it denied Appellant’s
motion to classify Defendant under Megan’s [Law], because
the classification requirements inherent in Megan’s Law are
civil and remedial, and are not a punishment within the
defendant’s sentence.
{¶6} Ohio’s version of Megan’s Law, the codified system for the classification
and registration of sex offenders in effect at the time Reyes committed the rape offenses,
was enacted in 1996 and significantly amended in 2003 (Am.Sub.S.B. No. 5, 2003 Ohio
Laws File 29). The Supreme Court of Ohio consistently held that Megan’s Law was a
remedial statute providing civil consequences of a sex offense conviction, rather than a
punitive component of a criminal sentence. See State v. Williams, 129 Ohio St.3d 344,
2011-Ohio-3374, 952 N.E.2d 1108, ¶ 10-11.
{¶7} Ohio’s version of the Adam Walsh Act, the current codified system, was
enacted in 2007 (Am.Sub.S.B. No. 10, 2007 Ohio Laws File 10) and was in effect when
Reyes was sentenced in 2010. The Adam Walsh Act repealed Megan’s Law and replaced
it with new classification standards and additional registration requirements. In 2011, the
Supreme Court of Ohio held that, unlike Megan’s Law, these registration requirements
are punitive and therefore a part of the offender’s criminal sentence. Williams at ¶ 21.
Accordingly, the Adam Walsh Act, “as applied to defendants who committed sex offenses
prior to its enactment, violates Section 28, Article II of the Ohio Constitution, which
prohibits the General Assembly from passing retroactive laws.” Id. at syllabus.
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{¶8} Reyes contends that the trial court has jurisdiction to reclassify him under
Megan’s Law because his sentence and classification “are separate entries and treated
as separately appealable orders.”
{¶9} First, the premise of Reyes’ argument—that the trial court has jurisdiction
to reclassify him because the sentence and classification are treated as separate orders
under Megan’s Law—is misplaced. Reyes was classified under the Adam Walsh Act,
meaning the registration requirements are a punitive component of his criminal sentence.
See Williams at ¶ 21; see also State v. Schilling, 1st Dist. Hamilton No. C-210363, 2022-
Ohio-1773, ¶ 9.
{¶10} We have already determined, in Reyes’ last appeal, that his failure to file a
timely direct appeal resulted in the forfeiture of his challenge to the trial court’s retroactive
application of the Adam Walsh Act and that his collateral attack on this alleged sentencing
error is barred by the doctrine of res judicata. Reyes, 2021-Ohio-3478, at ¶ 9, ¶ 16; see
also State v. Henderson, 161 Ohio St.3d 285, 2020-Ohio-4784, 162 N.E.3d 776, ¶ 90
(Donnelly, J., dissenting), citing State v. Harper, 160 Ohio St.3d 480, 2020-Ohio-2913,
159 N.E.3d 248, ¶ 41 (“A direct appeal is the available legal process to address a trial
court’s alleged sentencing error, and the failure to challenge a sentencing error on direct
appeal operates as res judicata to any later collateral attack on the judgment.”).
{¶11} Reyes attempted to reframe his challenge, filing a motion for reclassification
rather than a motion to vacate his classification, but the result is the same. Because the
trial court had subject matter jurisdiction and personal jurisdiction over Reyes, any error
in the sentence—including the Adam Walsh Act Tier III classification—was voidable, not
void. Reyes, 2021-Ohio-3478, at ¶ 8-9, citing Henderson at ¶ 43. Thus, even though
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retroactive application of the Adam Walsh Act is an error that is constitutional in nature, it
cannot be corrected now because Reyes did not timely and directly appeal his sentence.
Reyes, 2021-Ohio-3478, at ¶ 9-10, citing Henderson at ¶ 17, citing Tari v. State, 117 Ohio
St. 481, 495, 159 N.E. 594 (1927).
{¶12} For this reason, the trial court has no authority to enter an order reclassifying
Reyes under Megan’s Law and did not err in denying Reyes’ motion. See also Schilling,
2022-Ohio-1773, at ¶ 20 (where the First District vacated the trial court’s order
reclassifying under Megan’s Law an offender who was originally, and retroactively,
classified under the Adam Walsh Act).
{¶13} Reyes relies on an opinion from the Twelfth District, which held that the
Supreme Court’s “voidable criminal sentence” analysis in Henderson does not apply to
Megan’s Law reclassification proceedings because they are civil in nature. State v.
Jones, 12th Dist. Butler No. CA2020-07-080, 2021-Ohio-2149, ¶ 22. In Henderson, the
Supreme Court of Ohio held that “sentences based on an error are voidable, if the court
imposing the sentence had jurisdiction over the case and the defendant, including
sentences in which a trial court failed to impose a statutorily mandated term.” Henderson,
2020-Ohio-4784, at ¶ 27. “The question simply turns on whether the court had jurisdiction
over the subject matter and the person.” Id. at ¶17, citing Tari at 492. Henderson marked
a return, in sentencing cases, to the traditional distinction between void and voidable
judgments in all cases, specifically recognizing that “adopting anything but a bright-line
jurisdictional rule to govern all cases, civil and criminal, would ‘result in hopeless
confusion.’” (Emphasis added.) Henderson at ¶ 18, quoting Tari at 498. In Jones, the
Twelfth District refused to apply Henderson to the defendant’s reclassification because
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Megan’s Law proceedings are civil and remedial, not criminal. Jones at ¶ 30-31. It noted
that the Supreme Court of Ohio held that Megan’s Law does not affect the finality of a
sentence because it is a civil, remedial consequence of a conviction. Id. at ¶ 24, citing
State ex rel. Grant v. Collins, 155 Ohio St.3d 242, 2018-Ohio-4281, 120 N.E.3d 804, ¶
17.
{¶14} We find the reasoning in Jones unpersuasive. First, Collins was decided
prior to Henderson. Further, the well-established law of void versus voidable was relied
on, but not created, by Henderson. Yet the Twelfth District does not explain why the
distinction does not apply to Megan’s Law merely because it is a civil judgment.
Moreover, the pronouncement in Collins was made in the context of a prohibition action.
The Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal of the action on the basis that the trial court
did not patently or unambiguously lack jurisdiction to proceed with a Megan’s Law
classification hearing nearly three decades after the defendant’s conviction. Collins at ¶
18. The defendant had never been classified under any law during that time and
remained in prison. Id. at ¶ 2, ¶ 14. Thus, the Supreme Court was emphasizing that the
criminal sentence and the separate classification under Megan’s Law need not be
imposed at the same time, i.e., the finality of the criminal sentence did not foreclose the
trial court from imposing civil consequences under Megan’s Law decades later. The
Court did not hold, however, that the finality of the criminal sentence rendered a
classification error void and subject to collateral attack. We do not agree with and decline
to adopt the Twelfth District’s reasoning in Jones. See also Schilling at ¶ 20 (“We decline
to adopt the reasoning in Jones. Instead, we follow the reasoning in Reyes.”).
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{¶15} Reyes’ sole assigned error is without merit, and the judgment of the Portage
County Court of Common Pleas is affirmed.
CYNTHIA WESTCOTT RICE, J.,
MARY JANE TRAPP, J.,
concur.
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