Drug sentences affirmed by appeals court

By: 
Larry Limpf

The Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals has upheld the convictions of two men in separate cases stemming from drug offenses.
In a case from the Wood County Common Pleas Court, the appeals court ruled the trial court correctly imposed a consecutive sentence for Travon Evans, who was arrested by the Ohio State Highway Patrol in June 2018 during a traffic stop.
Evans admitted to possessing a bag of fentanyl during the stop and said he made regular trips between West Virginia and Detroit, with 150 grams being the most he’d ever transported. At the time, Evans was also facing federal charges for drug trafficking.
Under a plea deal, he was found guilty of one count of aggravated trafficking in drugs, a third degree felony, and prosecutors dismissed three other charges. He was sentenced to 24 months in prison with the sentence to be served consecutively to his federal prison term.
His appeal contended the common pleas court imposed a consecutive sentence to the federal sentence without making the required judicial findings at his sentencing hearing.
But the appeals court ruled the common pleas court followed the appropriate sentencing criteria.
“The trial court …determined that at least two offenses were committed as part of one or more courses of conduct, and the harm caused was so great or unusual that no single prison term adequately reflects the seriousness of the defendant’s conduct – as indicated by a long ongoing pattern of criminal organized crime activity in trafficking in drugs,” the appeals court ruled.

Sentence appealed
The other case also started with a traffic stop in December 2019.
Charles Sheets was found guilty in a plea deal in Ottawa County Common Pleas Court of one count of aggravated possession of methamphetamine – a third degree felony - and sentenced to 30 months in prison and given credit for 164 days served. He was also ordered to pay a mandatory fine of $5,000 and his driver’s license was suspended for three years.
In his appeal, Sheets argued the trial court should not have sentenced him to three years in prison in light of his attempts to engage in counseling and address his substance abuse issues.
But the appeals court backed the sentence imposed by the trial court and ruled the lower court considered the factors in the relevant section of state law and “found the more likely recidivism factors outweighed the less likely factors.
“A review of the record, including the pre-sentence investigative report with appellant’s lengthy criminal record, and the relevant law shows the trial court properly considered all of the relevant statutory factors prior to sentencing and complied with all of the applicable rules and laws… when it imposed a sentence within the permissible statutory sentencing range for a third-degree felony.”

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