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Court denies application for reconsideration in man's assault case
JESSICA SHAMBAUGH
Special to the Legal News
Published: September 17, 2014
In a recently released opinion, the 10th District Court of Appeals denied the state’s application for reconsideration of an opinion released in June.
In the previous opinion, the trial court reversed a Franklin County Court of Common Pleas ruling finding John Patterson guilty of felonious assault and ordered that it must allow a jury to consider an instruction for aggravated assault.
The defendant, Patterson, was arrested and charged with a count of felonious assault following an altercation with Jhuty Imhotep Minter.
The evidence presented at trial clearly established that Patterson struck Minter with a handgun.
Minter suffered serious injury from the blow, including the loss of all of the vision in one of his eyes.
Based on that evidence, the appellate court previously opined that Patterson was “clearly guilty of felonious assault unless attendant facts established that self-defense applied or that the aggravated assault statute applied.”
They explained in the previous opinion that aggravated assault would apply if Patterson could show he was acting in a sudden fit rage.
During his trial, Patterson explained that he confronted Minter after his girlfriend’s son alleged that Minter had propositioned him. The boy reportedly told Patterson and his mother that Minter asked him to perform oral sex.
Immediately after hearing about the proposition, Patterson went out to confront Minter, asking him if he was the man who propositioned the boy.
Minter conceded that Patterson appeared angry and approached while drawing his weapon and calling Minter names.
In the June opinion, the district judges held that the alleged sexual proposition qualified as a serious provocation and ruled that a jury must determine if Patterson was acting under a sudden fit of passion or rage.
In its application for reconsideration, the state cited the testimony of Terror Mitchell, the mother of the child in question.
Mitchell told the trial court she assumed that Patterson was not in a rage because he took her two young sons with him to confront Minter.
“Her assumption overlooks the obvious explanation that Patterson wanted to be sure he was confronting the right person and the boy who had been propositioned could clearly identify the man who propositioned him,” Judge Gary Tyack wrote on behalf of the three-judge appellate panel.
Still, the state asserted there was no evidence that Patterson acted with sudden passion.
The judges disagreed with that assertion and ruled that it ignored the undisputed facts set forth in the previous ruling.
“The state attempts to limit the facts in testimony in this case and then uses its version of the facts as a basis for disagreeing with our analysis of the testimony which indicated that a jury question was presented as to whether Patterson was acting under a fit of rage when he struck Jhuty Imhotep Minter with a handgun and seriously injured him,” Judge Tyack stated.
The judges additionally noted that Minter described Patterson approaching with a weapon, calling him a “punk” and yelling out accusations.
“A jury could easily find that Patterson was in a rage and the rage got visible even to Minter when Minter laughed at the accusation instead of apologizing or expressing guilt for propositioning the child,” Judge Tyack continued.
“A trial court should have let the jury decide if the appropriate charge was felonious assault or aggravated assault.”
Presiding Judge Lisa Sadler and Judge Amy O’Grady joined Judge Tyack in denying the state’s application for reconsideration.
The case is cited State v. Patterson, 2014-Ohio-3525. The previous opinion was issued in State v. Patterson, 2014-Ohio-2740.
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