Youngstown Daily Legal News

Craigslist robber loses appeal

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: June 9, 2014

A man who lured a couple to Akron through Craigslist and staged a robbery had his appeal overruled recently when the 9th District Court of Appeals affirmed the judgment of the Summit County Court of Common Pleas.

The case was remanded, however, for the lower court to make the findings necessary to impose consecutive sentences.

Case summary states that, on June 19, 2012, Joseph and Carol Cameron found a car for sale on Craigslist.

After contacting the number provided in the ad, they arranged to view the car at an address in Akron.

When they arrived, a man told them that the car was in a garage behind the house.

Instead of a car, the Camerons were confronted by three men holding guns once they rounded the corner.

The gunmen robbed the couple of $450 dollars that they had brought as a down payment as well as some personal effects.

The defendant, Doylyn Clayton, was identified using the information posted on the Craigslist ad.

Clayton admitted to posting the ad, being present during the robbery and splitting the proceeds of the robbery.

However, he denied that there were three guns involved, claiming that only one BB gun was used and that weapon was wielded by one of his accomplices.

Clayton only gave the first names of the other perpetrators and they were never apprehended.

A jury returned guilty verdicts on two counts of aggravated robbery and two accompanying firearm specifications.

The trial court sentenced Clayton to five years in prison for each of the aggravated robbery convictions and three years for each firearm specification, with all sentences ordered to run consecutively.

In his subsequent appeal, Clayton argued that the state failed to present sufficient evidence to support the firearm specifications.

He based his contention on the state’s failure to show that the weapon used was a real firearm and that it was operational.

The 9th District’s three-judge appellate panel disagreed.

Writing on behalf of the appellate panel, Judge Beth Whitmore cited the Ohio Revised Code which defines a firearm as “any deadly weapon capable of expelling or propelling one or more projectiles by the action of an explosive or combustible propellant.”

“Proof of the operability of a firearm can be established by circumstantial evidence, which can consist of the brandishing of a firearm by the defendant and an implicit threat to shoot it,” wrote Judge Whitmore.

Joseph Cameron testified at trial that all three men had guns and that Clayton’s was the largest.

He told the jury that Clayton’s gun was “shiny and large” and “pretty much looked like a 9mm.”

Based on the way Clayton was shaking and the weight of the gun, Joseph concluded that the firearm was real and not a BB gun.

Carol also testified that all three men had guns, the largest of which was held by Clayton.

She stated that the other two guns were what appeared to be .22 caliber weapons.

“Based on the record, the state produced sufficient evidence that the weapon used by Clayton was a firearm,” wrote Judge Whitmore.

The Cameron’s both testified that Clayton was holding a gun to their heads while they were being robbed of their money, which the appellate panel concluded constituted an implicit threat.

Therefore, “the state produced sufficient evidence that the firearm was operational by the circumstantial evidence of Clayton’s actions,” according to Judge Whitmore.

Clayton also challenged the manifest weight of the evidence supporting his convictions, but that assignment of error was also overruled.

Again, he argued that his consistent claim that the firearm was actually a BB gun, coupled with the fact that no weapon was ever recovered, supported his innocence.

The appellate panel consulted Clayton’s police interview, during which investigating detectives questioned him about text messages found on his phone.

In one text, dated two days after the robbery, Clayton asked one of his accomplices for a “strap.”

He confirmed to detectives that “strap” meant gun.

At trial, Clayton claimed that a strap could refer to a gun or a BB gun.

“The jury had the opportunity to weigh Clayton’s recorded statements and testimony against those of the Camerons,” wrote Judge Whitmore. “After reviewing the facts, we are unable to conclude that the jury lost its way and created a manifest miscarriage of justice when it found that Clayton had a firearm and displayed it in furtherance of the robbery.”

The appellate panel proceeded to overrule Clayton’s assignments of error regarding the merger of his offenses.

It held that, by robbing two victims, he committed two separate crimes with a separate animus.

The court of appeals did side with Clayton on his last point, where he claimed that the trial court erred by imposing consecutive sentences without making the proper statutory findings.

According to the sentencing hearing transcript, the trial court stated, “While Clayton does not have a criminal history, the harm in this case is where you have two victims who were deceived into coming to Akron through the Craigslist ad and taken to the back of an abandoned house, put down on their knees at gunpoint ... in the court’s opinion, a single term does not adequately reflect the seriousness of the conduct of the defendant in this case.”

The appellate panel concluded that, while the trial court considered whether consecutive sentence were necessary to protect the public, it made no statement that would allow it to conclude that the court made the requisite statutory findings.

The case was remanded for the Summit County court to consider if consecutive sentences are appropriate but judgment was otherwise affirmed.

Presiding Judge Jennifer Hensal and Judge Donna Carr concurred.

The case is cited State v. Clayton, 2014-Ohio-2165.

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