A Cleveland man serving 26 year to life in prison is entitled to a new review of his request for DNA testing.

A Cleveland man serving 26 year to life in prison is entitled to a new review of his request for DNA testing.

A Cleveland man is entitled to a new review of his request for further DNA testing, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today. The Supreme Court found the trial judge improperly rejected his application by citing word-for-word, including a typographical error, the prosecution's objections to retesting.

The Court reversed the Eighth District Court of Appeals decision and directed the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court to reconsider Michael Riley’s DNA testing application. Riley was convicted of being complicit in a murder outside of a Cleveland bar in 2016.

Riley was thought to be the person who fired a shot from the rear window on the driver’s side of a car that was pulling out of a parking lot. The trial court ruled the identity of the person firing the gun could not be determined but the court concluded that Riley was either the shooter or complicit in the murder. He was sentenced to 26 years to life in prison.

In the Court’s lead opinion, Justice Michael P. Donnelly wrote that Riley’s attempt to prove he was not the shooter was mishandled by the trial court considering his postconviction petition to retest DNA using more advanced technology than existed at the time of his trial. The trial judge rejected Riley’s request without an explanation rather than following the process required by R.C. 2953.73(D), which requires the court to explain its reasoning.

After the rejection, Riley appealed to the Eighth District. On the same day of the appeal, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office submitted a proposed finding of facts and conclusions of law to the trial court to argue for the rejection of Riley’s petition. The trial judge adopted the prosecutor’s filing verbatim as the court’s reasoning for rejecting the request.

Weeks later, the trial court sent the finding of facts and conclusions of law to the Eighth District to supplement the appeals court record. Based on the trial court’s information and Riley’s objections, the Eighth District affirmed the denial of the DNA testing.

Justice Donnelly wrote that the prosecutor’s submission contained a substantial factual error about the original DNA test that the judge should have noticed. The Supreme Court noted the inclusion of the typographical error in the trial court decision indicated it did not follow the law’s requirement to give a meaningful review of the entire record, including Riley’s arguments for retesting.

Justices Melody Stewart and Jennifer Brunner joined Justice Donnelly’s opinion.

In an opinion concurring in judgment only, Justice R. Patrick DeWine wrote the Eighth District’s decision should be reversed and remanded because the appeals court had no authority to consider the late filings of the trial court. Once Riley filed his notice of appeal, the trial court no longer had jurisdiction in the case, except to take action in aid of the appeal, Justice DeWine stated.

The trial court’s subsequent adoption of the prosecutor’s findings of facts and conclusions of law did not aid in the appeal. Therefore, the findings were void, and the appellate court lacked authority to consider them, he wrote. Since the Eighth District improperly relied on those findings, its decision was incorrect, the opinion maintained. The trial court must reconsider Riley’s case and comply with the law requiring it to include within its judgment and order the reasons for its decision, Justice DeWine wrote.

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy and Justice Joseph T. Deters joined Justice DeWine’s opinion.

Justice Patrick F. Fischer dissented and would dismiss the case as having been improvidently accepted.

The case was remanded to the trial court with instructions to independently consider Riley’s application and provide the reasoning for either accepting or rejecting his request.

2023-1149. State v. Riley, Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-5712.

View oral argument video of this case.

Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Office of Public Information for the general public and news media. Opinion summaries are not prepared for every opinion, but only for noteworthy cases. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official headnotes or syllabi of court opinions. The full text of this and other court opinions are available online.

PDF files may be viewed, printed, and searched using the free Acrobat^® Reader
Acrobat Reader is a trademark of Adobe Systems Incorporated.