DocketNumber: No. C-870443
Citation Numbers: 542 N.E.2d 1115, 44 Ohio App. 3d 201
Judges: BLACK, J.
Filed Date: 5/25/1988
Status: Precedential
Modified Date: 1/13/2023
In a trial to the court without a jury, defendant-appellant, Shelton Ware, was found guilty of two counts of felonious assault and not guilty by reason of insanity of three other counts of felonious assault and two counts of aggravated burglary. Ware contends in his first assignment of error that the trial court erred in finding him guilty of the two counts of felonious assault at the same time it found him legally insane with respect to the other five counts, because the evidence demonstrated that Ware's conduct constituted one continuous series of actions and failed to demonstrate that he was sane for one brief period and insane for the rest of his criminal activity. We find no merit in this assignment of error. The conviction and sentence are to be affirmed.
The trial court concluded that Ware could be sentenced on only one of the two felonious assaults of which he was found guilty, because they were *Page 202
allied offenses of similar import,1 and it imposed an immediate sentence of imprisonment of eight years (actual incarceration) to fifteen years. In the same entry, the court postponed or stayed until Ware's "release on parole" the hearing on hospitalization or institutionalization that is mandated by R.C.
The record discloses that on the night of February 1, 1987, Ware was living in an upper-floor apartment with a younger man, Benjamin Jones, with whom he had a close (impliedly homosexual) relationship, and that early in the evening they were together watching a videotape entitled "Sade." When Jones left the apartment, apparently to join a party elsewhere, Ware stayed, replaying the videotape. Between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m. Ware thought he heard Jones calling to him for help from apartment number one in the building and became convinced that Jones was being held a hostage by the occupants of that apartment. The occupants included Marrilene Wakefield, her common-law husband Johnnie Gibbsm two daughters and one or more sons. One of the daughters was Shanta Wakefield, seventeen years of age, and one of the sons was Jonathan.
In responding to the cries for help that Ware thought he heard, he consciously decided against two possible courses of action (calling the police or knocking on the apartment door to demand Jones's release), because neither course had proved effective in the immediate past. The police did not respond to his telephone calls, and his conversations with the Wakefield-Gibbs family were nonproductive, in his mind. He took matters into his own hands.
Seizing a butcher knife from his kitchen, he climbed onto the roof of the apartment building and descended a fire escape to the second floor. He kicked in a window and entered the apartment that was occupied by Madeline Kelly, sixty-one years old. She was huddled on the floor near her bed. When Ware tripped over her, he began to stab her with the knife, not saying a word. She said, "Please don't kill me. I got a little great-grandson, and I would like to see him grow up." Ware realized that he had the wrong woman and the wrong apartment. He stopped the attack, and leaving Kelly bleeding profusely, he exited the apartment by the shattered window. He then broke into the Wakefield-Gibbs apartment, kicking in a window. The room he entered was Shanta's bedroom. She fled, leaving the building by a back door, and in the parking lot, she kept Ware at a distance by running to the far side of a parked car. Awakened, Johnnie Gibbs took a rifle that happened to be unloaded and ran outside, yelling at Ware. Ware turned and charged. Gibbs struck him with the rifle once, but slipped and fell to the ground when he attempted to hit him again. Ware attacked Gibbs with the *Page 203 knife, and despite Gibbs' defensive countermeasures with the rifle, he was stabbed three times. One of those thrusts resulted in Ware's cutting his own hand when it slid from the handle to the blade. Gibbs' son Jonathan hit Ware with a bat, and Ware fled from the scene. Ware tried to hide the knife in a hole in the ground (it was later found), and he ran to the emergency room at the Veterans Administration Hospital for treatment of his cut hand. He was duly arrested.
Ware was charged with five counts of felonious assault (two types of felonious assault against Madeline Kelly, two against Johnnie Gibbs, and one against Shanta Wakefield) and two counts of aggravated burglary.
Following Ware's plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, he was examined by two professionals, Dr. Arthur Helm, M.D., a psychiatrist who later testified for Ware, and Donald Ormiston, Ph.D., a psychologist who testified in rebuttal for the prosecution. Both professionals are associated with the Court Psychiatric Clinic and had been appointed by the court to examine Ware in connection with his insanity plea. While they both agreed that Ware had chronic paranoid schizophrenic disorder (a mental disease) and that he knew the wrongfulness of his act, they differed in their opinions about whether Ware had the ability to refrain from doing the acts. Dr. Helm opined that Ware was unable to refrain from the criminal conduct because he was "totally impaired due to the mental illness at the time," but this opinion was later modified on cross-examination when the doctor conceded that Ware could not have been totally impaired since he stopped his attack on Madeline Kelly when he realized she was the wrong woman. The trial court elicited Dr. Helm's opinion that Ware followed the logic of his delusions when he ceased the attack on Madeline Kelly and redirected his compulsively irrational aggression to the occupants of apartment number one.
Dr. Ormiston, on the other hand, was of the opinion that, despite Ware's twenty-year history of mental disturbance and disease, he had the ability to refrain from doing his several criminal acts on the night in question.
The trial court concluded that Ware was not legally insane when he attacked Madeline Kelly, that he was legally insane during his subsequent acts, and that he was guilty of the first two counts and not guilty by reason of insanity of the other five counts. Sentencing was deferred. At the subsequent hearing (on the seventh day after the court's findings), the court considered the question whether to hold the mental-illness hearing required by R.C.
"(Hearing under R.C.
Appellant argues in his first assignment of error that the guilty *Page 204
finding for the assault of Madeline Kelly was erroneous because the evidence does not support the court's conclusion that Ware wavered between sanity and insanity during the course of events on February 1, 1987. He asks for a discharge from the conviction. We find no merit in his arguments, because as the trier of the facts, the court exercised its power to resolve the evidentiary conflict about Ware's ability to refrain from criminal activity, and the court's conclusions will not be overturned solely by reason of facial inconsistency. State v. DeHass (1967),
The results of this trial are remarkably similar to those reported in State v. Brown (1984),
The second assignment of error attacks the trial court's attempted stay of the hospitalization hearing after the finding of not guilty by reason of insanity.5 Whether the stay order was valid depends on an interpretation of R.C.
"The interpretation of a statute is the determination of what the statute means. The interpretation starts and ends with the words chosen by the legislature, but it is not limited to the words alone, because the whole context of the enactment must be considered.
"The process of interpretation requires (1) a decision about the purpose to be attributed to the statute and (2) a decision about the meaning of the legislature's words that will carry out that purpose. The words have a double function: they serve as guides to *Page 205 discovery of the purpose, and they serve as limitations on the extent of the statute's applications. The words must be taken in their usual, normal or customary meaning."
The language of R.C.
The words chosen by the legislature are unequivocal and leave no room for doubt. R.C.
"The hearing shall be held in the trial court within sevencourt days after the finding of not guilty by reason of insanity.Failure to conduct the hearing within the seven-day period shallcause the immediate discharge of the respondent, unless a continuance is granted by the judge for not longer than seven court days for good cause shown." (Emphasis added.)
There are no provisions for a stay of the hearing. The hearing obviously must be held within seven "court days" of the finding of not guilty by reason of insanity (or fourteen court days, for good cause shown), or the "respondent" shall be discharged. The language bears a clear implication that if the respondent is concurrently sentenced to imprisonment for crimes other than his "insane" ones, the treatment shall come first.
Turning to other statutes that address the handling of accused persons and convicted persons who have mental illnesses (the context of R.C.
We note that the young man in State v. Brown, supra,
The appellant's convictions and sentence are affirmed. This case is *Page 206
remanded to the trial court with instructions to enter an order that shall vacate that portion of its final judgment entry journalized June 16, 1987, that stays the hearing under R.C.
Judgment accordingly.
SHANNON, P.J., and KLUSMEIER, J., concur.
"There will be a stay and so forth on the hearing, but if in fact the stay is invalid, it is my intention that he do the time that I commit him to rather to be subjected to R.C.