A Franklin County Common Pleas Court’s decision to grant judicial release to a woman convicted for three robberies may be incorrect and must be recalculated, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today.

A Supreme Court majority found that trial courts make two separate calculations when an offender seeks judicial release under R.C. 2929.20. The Court reversed the decision of the Tenth District Court of Appeals, which had affirmed the trial court’s decision to grant Chelsie Kennedy judicial release for two sentences issued in 2014, and remanded the case to the trial court for further proceedings.

Kennedy had been sentenced by one Franklin County judge to nine years in prison in one case. Kennedy was sentenced by a different judge in the two other cases relevant to this appeal.  Those sentences were ordered to run concurrently to each other but consecutively to the nine years imposed by the first trial judge for an aggregate 15-year sentence.

In 2021, Kennedy applied for judicial release in all three cases. The first trial judge denied her request for release in that case. The second judge granted Kennedy’s request for judicial release in the two other cases that are the subject of this appeal. The Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office objected to the release, arguing Kennedy was not yet eligible to apply for judicial release.

Writing for the Court, Justice Melody Stewart explained that the relevant question to be decided was whether Kennedy had filed the judicial-release motions after the applicable waiting period described in R.C. 2929.20(C)(1) through (5).  Each of those subsections describes two separate calculations for a trial court to determine judicial release eligibility.  First, the court must determine the length of the “aggregated nonmandatory prison term or terms” to determine which subsection applies.  Second, it must determine whether the applicant for judicial release has served the specific waiting period described in the applicable subsection of R.C. 2929.20(C).

The Court noted the trial court and appeals court did not fully assess the second calculation in Kennedy’s appealed cases. Because that calculation had not been conducted, the case was remanded to the trial court for further proceedings to determine Kennedy’s eligibility.

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy and Justices Patrick F. Fischer, R. Patrick DeWine, Jennifer Brunner, and Joseph T. Deters joined Justice Stewart’s opinion.

Justice Michael P. Donnelly concurred in judgment only and wrote separately to criticize the complexity and unfairness of the judicial release statute.

2023-1299. State v. Kennedy, Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-5728.

View oral argument video of this case.

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