Update: On June 22, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court denied cert. in this case
Case Background
In 2006, Travis Soto told the police he had accidentally killed his young son Julio in an all-terrain vehicle (“ATV”) accident. Soto was charged with child endangering and involuntary manslaughter. Soto negotiated a plea in which he pled guilty to child endangering and in exchange the involuntary manslaughter charge was dismissed. Soto served a five-year prison sentence.
In 2016, several years after the completion of his sentence, Soto went to the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office and confessed that he had actually beaten his son to death and had staged the ATV accident. The 2006 autopsy report and photographs were reviewed by a pediatric-abuse specialist, who concluded that Julio’s injuries were consistent with Soto’s newest story.
Soto was indicted for aggravated murder and murder, among other offenses. Soto filed a motion to dismiss on double jeopardy grounds. The trial court denied Soto’s motion, finding that double-jeopardy protection did not bar Soto’s prosecution for murder and aggravated murder because involuntary manslaughter with a child-endangering predicate is not the same offense as murder with a felonious-assault predicate. Soto appealed.
The State Appeals
In a split decision, the Third District Court of Appeals agreed with Soto that a subsequent prosecution was barred in these circumstances, on double jeopardy grounds. But in a 6-1 opinion written by Justice DeWine, the Supreme Court of Ohio reversed the appeals court, holding that because the involuntary-manslaughter charge was dismissed as part of a plea bargain before a jury was empaneled, jeopardy never attached to that charge. Therefore, the double jeopardy prohibition did not prevent prosecuting Soto for murder or aggravated murder. Justice Donnelly dissented, taking the position that a defendant in a plea agreement expects finality with regard to all the offenses resolved by the plea bargain, included the dismissed charges.
Read the analysis of the merit decision from the Supreme Court of Ohio here.
Soto Files Cert. Petition
On February 27, 2020, Cleveland attorney Louis Grube, of the law firm Paul W. Flowers Co., L.P.A., filed a petition for certiorari in the case. The issue presented is “whether the rights preserved by the Double Jeopardy Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution attach to charges dismissed during execution of a negotiated plea agreement that avoids a jury trial, or may the defendant be reindicted later for charges constituting the same offense.” Federal courts of appeals are split on this issue. Grube argues the rule adopted by the Supreme Court of Ohio threatens to thwart the finality of judgments that are reached through plea agreements. Co-authoring the petition and co-counseling in the case is Carly M. Edelstein, Assistant State Public Defender Office of the Ohio Public Defender.
Amici in Support of Soto
So far, a number of state and national public defender organizations have filed a joint amicus brief in support of Soto, arguing that “[b]y allowing claims negotiated away to be re-charged in future prosecutions, the court below has undermined one of the most important promises of the negotiated plea infrastructure—the finality of that agreement.”
Court Requests Response From State
The state, through State Solicitor General Ben Flowers, originally waived its response to the petition, but on April 7, 2020, the U.S. Supreme Court requested a response from the state. The blog will provide a link to the state’s response when it is filed.