Prison sentence vacated on appeal

A decision by the Wood County Common Pleas Court that imposed a prison sentence for a man found guilty of attempted pandering of sexually-oriented material has been reversed.
The Ohio Sixth District Court of Appeals has ruled the lower court erred when it sentenced Randy Merer, Perrysburg, to 36 months in prison on each of seven pandering counts and 12 months for a charge of possessing criminal tools. The pandering counts were to be served concurrently and the criminal tool possession count was to be consecutively served to the pandering counts for an aggregate prison term of 48 months.
The charges arose from Merer’s use of cell phones to record sexual encounters he had with a 17-year-old female. He was indicted in June 2019 and reached an agreement with the prosecutor’s office that allowed him to plead guilty to the pandering charges and possessing criminal tools charge.
During the sentencing hearing, his attorney asked the court to impose community control and noted the charges were third degree felonies and carried “no presumption of prison, no presumption of probation” under state law.
Prosecutor’s disagreed and asked the court to set prison sentences.
In his appeal, Merer argued the court erred in sentencing him to incarceration and imposing consecutive sentences.
The appeals court agreed and ruled the trial court based its sentence decision on the wrong section of the Ohio Revised Code.
“So, instead of starting from a place of neutrality, as required by Revised Code…., the judgment entry clearly states that the trial court started its sentencing analysis under the impression that Merer had to go to prison. Even if the trial court did everything else right in fashioning Merer’s sentence, when the court starts its consideration of a defendant’s punishment from the wrong place, the resulting sentence cannot stand,” the appeals court wrote.
The appeals court vacated the sentence and remanded the case to the trial court for a resentencing hearing. Merer’s appeal to challenge the setting of consecutive sentences was declared moot by the appeals court because it had vacated the prison sentence.

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