State v. Hunter

{¶ 1} This case presents two issues for our consideration in connection with the statutorily prescribed repeat violent offender specification. The first is whether this court’s decision in State v. Foster, 109 Ohio St.3d 1, 2006-Ohio-856, 845 N.E.2d 470, severed the repeat violent offender specification from the Revised Code and precluded trial courts from imposing an enhanced penalty for that specification. The second is whether a court engages in improper judicial fact-finding in violation of the right to a jury trial by designating an offender as a repeat violent offender pursuant to…