Ohio Supreme Court to consider how stand-your-ground law applies to two teens' life sentences

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – The applicability of Ohio’s stand-your-ground law – and two teenagers’ life sentences in prison – are in the hands of the state’s high court.

After accepting a series of cases related to the state’s self-defense statutes, the Ohio Supreme Court agreed on Nov. 17 to consolidate the cases of two young men facing life in prison for another teenager’s death during a drug deal. The pending review will settle disagreements among Ohio’s courts about whether a law eliminating the duty to retreat in self-defense cases should apply when the crime occurred before it went into effect but the trial happened after.

On a fateful afternoon in Cleveland in June 2019, then-17-year-old Jaidee Miree and then-18-year-old Desmond Duncan with 18-year-old Trinity Campbell in her car, planning to pick up cannabis from 19-year-old Ramses Hurley. After Hurley entered the car, a dispute began. Miree, Duncan and Campbell’s stories about what happened in the car differ, but according to theirs and witnesses’ statements and security footage from the scene, Hurley’s gun fired two shots and then Duncan pushed Hurley out of the car, a fall that would eventually kill Hurley.

Campbell took a plea deal in exchange for testifying against Duncan and Miree. She claimed on the stand that Duncan and Miree also had guns and had planned to rob Hurley, a theory the men’s attorneys believe came from detectives. Only gunshot residue and bullets from Hurley’s gun were recovered from the scene.

The three were charged with a myriad of offenses, including aggravated murder, felony murder, aggravated robbery, involuntary manslaughter, felonious assault and improperly handling a firearm in a vehicle. More than a dozen firearm specifications were tacked onto the charges stemming from the prosecution’s theory that Duncan and Miree planned to rob Hurley.

“The prosecutor threw the book at these teenagers,” Miree’s attorney wrote on appeal to the Supreme Court.

Duncan and Miree denied Campbell’s version of events. Both said Hurley pointed the gun at Miree, it went off during a struggle, and Duncan pushed Hurley out of the vehicle for fear of his life.

In June 2021, a jury convicted Duncan and Miree on felony murder, felonious assault and involuntary manslaughter, but dropped the firearms specifications and found them not guilty of any weapons violations or of robbery. Those acquittals meant the jury rejected the state’s argument that the men intended to rob Hurley, their attorneys said.

Before the jury entered deliberation, the judge instructed jurors on the legal requirements to consider when weighing a self-defense claim. But he also told the jury that it must consider whether Duncan violated a duty to retreat to avoid danger before using deadly force in self-defense.

Both men were sentenced to life imprisonment with the possibility of parole after 15 years. 

Miree’s and Duncan’s attorneys argued at the time and on appeal that a law eliminating the duty to retreat, which went into effect in April 2021, should have applied when the jury deliberated in their case two months later. A split Eighth District appeals court disagreed, siding with the state’s argument that because the crime occurred before the new law went into effect, it could not be applied retroactively to Miree’s and Duncan’s cases because the state constitution forbids such retroactivity. 

On appeal to the high court, the duo’s attorneys separately claimed the language of the new law – which explicitly prohibits considering “the possibility of retreat” in self-defense cases – is prospective relative to future trials, not retroactive relative to criminal incidents. While the incident occurred before April 2021, the trial did not begin until two months after the law went into effect.

The Ohio Supreme Court previously ruled that a change to the self-defense law shifting the burden of proof from the defense to the prosecution should apply to all trials after its enactment, regardless of when the incident occurred. The state, and the Eighth District court, said that change was not as substantive as the elimination of the duty to retreat, and thus that decision should not apply to Duncan’s and Miree’s cases.

The 11th District court in Lake County, however, ruled differently last November. The appellate court ordered a new trial after determining a judge improperly instructed a jury on a defendant’s duty to retreat before using self-defense. 

“Obviously, the uncertainty about the law’s applicability cannot be permitted to endure. That uncertainty affects the way cases are investigated, plea-bargained, tried, and appealed,” Duncan’s attorney wrote in his appeal to the Supreme Court. “This Court is the only one which can eliminate that uncertainty.”

Both Duncan’s and Miree’s cases were accepted in February, but the briefing was delayed while the court considered the same duty-to-retreat question in another case. After hearing oral arguments in that case, the Supreme Court dismissed it for having been “improvidently accepted,” and has now agreed to hear Duncan’s and Miree’s cases under one oral argument.

All parties have 40 days to file briefs, and Duncan and Miree may file briefs separately. Each side will have 20 minutes for oral argument.