Background
Robert James Davis III was arrested on June 15, 2023, for domestic violence against his wife, B.S., in Clark County, Ohio. After the State dismissed an initial municipal court case, a grand jury indicted Davis on July 7, 2023, for strangulation (R.C. 2903.18(B)(3)) and domestic violence (R.C. 2919.25(A)). Davis, who was incarcerated in Cuyahoga County on an unrelated felony, failed to appear for arraignment and was later transported to Clark County in March 2024. After being granted an own-recognizance bond, Davis failed to appear for pretrial hearings in May 2024, prompting the trial court to revoke his bond and issue a capias. He remained at large until his arrest on December 12, 2024.
Following multiple continuances—some requested by the State due to the victim’s scheduled C-section, others by Davis to obtain phone records from the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction—a jury trial commenced on May 27, 2025. The jury found Davis guilty as charged. At sentencing on June 18, 2025, the trial court merged the strangulation count with the domestic violence count, and the State elected sentencing on domestic violence. The court imposed a three-year prison term. Davis appealed, raising three assignments of error regarding speedy trial violations, admission of other-acts evidence, and sufficiency of the evidence.
The Court’s Holding
The Second District affirmed the conviction. Regarding speedy trial, the court held that Davis’s statutory rights under R.C. 2945.71 were not violated. The court calculated that only 54 days of speedy trial time elapsed before trial, well within the 90-day limit (270 days with triple-count for incarceration). Critical to the calculation was the court’s application of State v. Bauer, 61 Ohio St.2d 83 (1980), which holds that a defendant who fails to appear for a scheduled trial waives speedy trial rights for the period from initial arrest to rearrest. The court extended this rationale to Davis’s failure to appear for pretrial hearings, finding that his absence from May 2024 until his December 2024 arrest reset the speedy trial clock. The court also held that the time Davis spent incarcerated in Cuyahoga County (July 2023 to March 2024) did not count toward his Clark County speedy trial time because R.C. 2941.401—the specific statute governing prisoners with pending charges—places the burden on the defendant to request disposition, which Davis never did.
The court rejected Davis’s constitutional speedy trial claim, noting he failed to raise it in the trial court and declining to find plain error. It also rejected his ineffective assistance of counsel claim regarding the speedy trial motion, finding no deficiency or prejudice because the record adequately established the tolling events.
Regarding evidentiary issues, the court held that testimony about a civil protection order elicited during cross-examination of B.S. did not constitute reversible error. Because defense counsel elicited the testimony, any error was invited error. The court found no prosecutorial misconduct in the State’s rebuttal closing argument, which responded to defense counsel’s closing and relied on admitted evidence. Finally, the court declined to address Davis’s sufficiency and manifest weight challenges to the strangulation conviction because the trial court merged that count with the domestic violence count, rendering any error harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under State v. Stargell, 2016-Ohio-5653.
Key Takeaways
- A defendant who fails to appear for pretrial hearings, not just trial, may waive statutory speedy trial rights under Ohio law, resetting the 270-day clock upon rearrest.
- Time spent incarcerated in another Ohio county on unrelated charges does not count toward speedy trial time unless the defendant invokes R.C. 2941.401 by providing written notice and requesting final disposition.
- Defense counsel’s elicitation of testimony during cross-examination constitutes invited error, barring a subsequent claim that the evidence was improperly admitted under Evid.R. 404(B).
- When a trial court merges offenses and the State elects sentencing on one count, appellate challenges to the merged count’s sufficiency are rendered harmless and need not be addressed.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the strict procedural requirements of Ohio’s speedy trial statutes and clarifies that the waiver rationale of State v. Bauer extends beyond failure to appear for trial to include failure to appear for critical pretrial hearings. It underscores that defendants bear the burden of invoking speedy trial protections under R.C. 2941.401 when incarcerated elsewhere in Ohio, and that strategic decisions by defense counsel—such as eliciting testimony to attack credibility—will not support ineffective assistance claims merely because the strategy proved unsuccessful.