State v. Watts , 2019 Ohio 4856 ( 2019 )


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  • [Cite as State v. Watts, 2019-Ohio-4856.]
    IN THE COURT OF APPEALS
    FIRST APPELLATE DISTRICT OF OHIO
    HAMILTON COUNTY, OHIO
    STATE OF OHIO,                              :   APPEAL NO. C-180545
    TRIAL NO. C-18CRB-20171
    Plaintiff-Appellee,                 :
    O P I N I O N.
    vs.                                       :
    ANTONIO WATTS,                              :
    Defendant-Appellant.                  :
    Criminal Appeal From: Hamilton County Municipal Court
    Judgment Appealed From Is: Affirmed
    Date of Judgment Entry on Appeal: November 27, 2019
    Paula Boggs Muething, City Solicitor, Natalia Harris, City Prosecutor, and Jon Vogt,
    Appellate Director, for Plaintiff-Appellee,
    Raymond T. Faller, Hamilton County Public Defender, and Krista Gieske, Assistant Public
    Defender, for Defendant-Appellant.
    OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS
    BERGERON, Judge.
    {¶1}   A reunion between two long-time (but now erstwhile) friends, with some
    early-morning alcohol added to the mix, resulted in an assault charge and conviction for one
    of them against the other. Defendant-appellant Antonio Watts now appeals, challenging his
    conviction as against the manifest weight of the evidence. But he lost the credibility battle
    before the trial judge, and we see no basis as to how the court went astray on the record
    before us. The defendant also presents a Confrontation Clause argument, but this fails at a
    threshold level because the state offered no testimonial statement by an unavailable witness
    at trial. We therefore affirm the trial court’s judgment and overrule the assignments of
    error.
    I.
    {¶2}   After a night spent between two old friends, Mr. Watts and Tonia Humphry
    engaged in a physical altercation upon Mr. Watts’s return from an early morning errand (for
    a neighbor) to procure some additional beer. After growing tired of awaiting his return, Ms.
    Humphry decided to leave Mr. Watts’s apartment, stopping in the courtyard of the complex
    to converse with a neighbor, Ruby Mascus, on her way out to enjoy her day. Both sides
    present divergent stories as to what happened next.         According to Mr. Watts, upon
    returning to his apartment complex, an irritated Ms. Humphry greeted him with a punch to
    his face, seemingly for no apparent reason. In reaction to Ms. Humphry’s aggression, he hit
    her back, knocking her to the ground. After this altercation, Mr. Watts claims he quickly ran
    up to his apartment to make sure Ms. Humphry did not steal anything of his, and then
    returned to the courtyard to find the police already on the scene, apparently waiting for him.
    {¶3}   But there is another side to this story, as Ms. Humphry recalls the incident
    very differently. According to her, Mr. Watts angrily stormed into the courtyard, gripping
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    OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS
    an open beer can, and, despite her attempts to calm him down, he hit her face with the can,
    slicing her lip. After she regained her footing, Mr. Watts then punched her again, causing
    her to lose consciousness. The next thing Ms. Humphry recalls is waking up in the hospital.
    {¶4}   In the midst of these events, Officer Brown arrived on the scene, observing an
    unconscious and injured female (later identified as Ms. Humphry) being loaded into an
    ambulance. About an hour later, Officer Brown tracked down Mr. Watts, informing him
    that he was a suspect of an alleged assault, to which he protested, “She swung on me, so I
    had to defend myself.” Subsequently, Mr. Watts was charged and tried for assault.
    {¶5}   At trial, testifying in his own defense, Mr. Watts reiterated that he acted only
    in self-defense when hitting Ms. Humphry. In addition to considering both Mr. Watts’s and
    Ms. Humphry’s conflicting accounts of their altercation, the trial court also heard from
    Officer Brown concerning her observations upon arriving at the scene. But the only other
    witness to the event (Ms. Mascus, the neighbor) did not testify. The trial court ultimately
    believed Ms. Humphry’s side of the story, finding that Mr. Watts failed to prove his self-
    defense claim by a preponderance of the evidence, and accordingly it found him guilty of
    assault.   From this conviction, Mr. Watts now presents two assignments of error,
    challenging first the weight of the evidence in light of his self-defense claim and, second,
    contending that the court violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses by
    admitting at trial statements made by a nontestifying witness.
    II.
    {¶6}   We begin with Mr. Watts’s weight of the evidence challenge. When reviewing
    the weight of the evidence, we must inspect the entire record, weigh the evidence and all
    reasonable inferences, consider the credibility of the witnesses, and conclude whether, in
    resolving conflicts in the evidence, the court clearly lost its way and created a manifest
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    OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS
    miscarriage of justice. State v. Thompkins, 
    78 Ohio St. 3d 380
    , 387, 
    678 N.E.2d 541
    (1997).
    We see no such error on the record before us.
    {¶7}    Mr. Watts maintains that he proved by a preponderance of the evidence that
    he acted in self-defense when hitting Ms. Humphry, and thus his assault conviction
    contravenes the manifest weight of the evidence. To establish self-defense in a nondeadly
    force case, Mr. Watts must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that (1) he was not at
    fault in creating the situation, (2) he reasonably believed some force was necessary to
    defend himself against the imminent use of unlawful force, and (3) the force used was
    unlikely to cause death or great bodily harm. State v. Salaam, 2015-Ohio-4552, 
    47 N.E.3d 495
    , ¶ 15 (1st Dist.).1 Importantly, if Mr. Watts “fails to prove any one of the elements of
    self-defense by a preponderance of the evidence, he has failed to demonstrate that he acted
    in self-defense.” State v. Kimmell, 3d Dist. Wyandot No. 16-10-06, 2011-Ohio-660, ¶ 21.
    {¶8}    After a review of the record, we cannot agree with Mr. Watts that the trial
    court clearly lost its way. The evidence adduced at trial presents numerous reasons to
    question his credibility. For instance, although he insisted that he struck Ms. Humphry
    (only once) in self-defense, upon cross-examination he admitted that he hit her out of anger.
    He also denied that Ms. Humphry ever lost consciousness, testifying that she seemed more
    than fine after the incident, which conflicts both with her account and that of Officer Brown,
    who witnessed her with blood and injuries to her face being whisked away by ambulance.
    Casting further doubt on his credibility, Mr. Watts confessed he did not remember talking to
    Officer Brown after the incident because he “was really drunk.”
    {¶9}    In light of the evidence presented at trial, the court had at its disposal
    testimony from Mr. Watts, Ms. Humphry, and Officer Brown—not to mention the
    1 The General Assembly amended R.C. 2901.05 effective March 28, 2019, to shift the burden of proof of
    self-defense from the defendant to the state. Mr. Watts’s trial occurred before this change in the law, and
    accordingly we address his arguments under the law at the time of trial.
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    OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS
    opportunity to view Ms. Humphry’s injuries firsthand.          While the trial court heard
    testimony from Mr. Watts disputing the state’s evidence and supporting his self-defense
    claim, the judge, as the trier of fact, could apportion weight to each party’s testimony, and
    did so here, finding Ms. Humphry’s story more persuasive. Mr. Watts lost the credibility
    contest, and on the record before us, we see no basis to disturb his conviction. Accordingly,
    we overrule his first assignment of error.
    III.
    {¶10} Turning to the second assignment of error, Mr. Watts raises a constitutional
    issue, insisting that the trial court violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses
    by permitting Officer Brown to testify regarding out-of-court statements made by
    nontestifying witness Ms. Mascus. The Sixth Amendment’s Confrontation Clause prohibits
    “testimonial statements of a witness who did not appear at trial unless he was unavailable to
    testify, and the defendant had had a prior opportunity for cross-examination.” Crawford v.
    Washington, 
    541 U.S. 36
    , 53-54, 
    124 S. Ct. 1354
    , 
    158 L. Ed. 2d 177
    (2004). Although the rule
    against hearsay and the Confrontation Clause generally protect similar principles, “the
    Confrontation Clause may bar the admission of evidence that would otherwise be admissible
    under an exception to the hearsay rule.” State v. Issa, 
    93 Ohio St. 3d 49
    , 60, 
    752 N.E.2d 904
    (2001). Regardless, Mr. Watts only presents a Confrontation Clause argument to us in this
    appeal.
    {¶11} Recently, we elaborated upon the Confrontation Clause analysis regarding
    statements uttered during the course of a police investigation, and the circumstances that
    tip them into the “testimonial statements” category—including, but not limited to, the
    absence of an ongoing emergency and instances where the officer’s questions and the
    declarant’s answers suggest the primary purpose of the interrogation is to establish facts
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    OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS
    possibly relevant later for prosecution. See State v. Smith, 1st Dist. Hamilton No. C-180499,
    2019-Ohio-3257, ¶ 11. But we need not wrestle with those issues here, because Officer
    Brown never testified as to any statements made by Ms. Mascus. Instead, Officer Brown
    merely relayed that she relied on Ms. Mascus’s witness statement about the altercation in
    her decision to charge Mr. Watts with assault:
    Q: Okay. So you didn’t - - don’t tell me anything she said, but you talked to
    [Ms. Mascus]?
    A: Correct.
    Q: And that was part of your investigation?
    A: Yes.
    Q: Okay. So I asked you if you based your decision to file charges on the
    defendant on anything other than what we talked about? Now we’ve talked
    about your conversation with Ruby, is there anything else?
    A: The condition of the victim and the witness statements those are what I
    based my investigation on, and that’s why I signed warrants.
    {¶12} Officer Brown’s references to Ms. Mascus’s statements do not trigger
    Confrontation Clause concerns here because she never revealed the substance of any
    potentially testimonial statements (following the state’s directive not to). We therefore also
    overrule Mr. Watts’s second assignment of error.
    {¶13} For the foregoing reasons, we find Mr. Watts’s first and second assignments
    of error lack merit, and are accordingly overruled. The judgment of the trial court is
    affirmed.
    Judgment affirmed.
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    OHIO FIRST DISTRICT COURT OF APPEALS
    MYERS, P. J., and CROUSE, J., concur.
    Please note:
    The court has recorded its own entry this date.
    7
    

Document Info

Docket Number: C-180545

Citation Numbers: 2019 Ohio 4856

Judges: Bergeron

Filed Date: 11/27/2019

Precedential Status: Precedential

Modified Date: 11/27/2019