State v. Amos (Slip Opinion)

{¶ 1} The Ohio felony-sentencing-reform legislation, principally 1995 Am.Sub. S.B. No. 2, 146 Ohio Laws, Part IY, 7136, effective July 1, 1996 (“Senate Bill 2”), was designed to bring “truth in sentencing.” See, e.g., Woods v. Telb, 89 Ohio St.3d 504, 507-508, 733 N.E.2d 1103 (2000). By design, Senate Bill 2 limited the sentencing discretion of judges. Later developments have tightened some of those constraints, perhaps to the breaking point. The cases before us today1 present a question of how far those constraints reach.

{¶ 2} The issue in each case is whether a trial court’s decision to…