The Importance of Pleading No-Contest

In Ohio, there are three forms of pleading in traffic or criminal cases, guilty, not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity.  For purposes of this blog entry, I will not be discussing the third.  But, the reader should be aware of the issues involved in entering a plea of guilty or no contest.

A plea of “guilty” is a complete admission of guilt, Crim.R. 11(B)(1).  A plea of no contest  indicates that, while you are not admitting guilt, you do not dispute the charge.  In most instances, a no contest plea prevents any conviction being used in a civil action.  This is most prevalent in traffic accident cases where the defendant is charged with causing the accident.  By pleading no contest, the defendant can adjudicate the traffic case and prevent their plea from being used in a subsequent civil law suit for damages.

In the case of an OVI your plea takes on a much important role.  The nature of your plea determines your rights on appeal.  An example of this issue was illustrated in the recent case of State v. Ramsey, 2012 Ohio 134.  In the case, the defendant was arrested for OVI.  He filed several pre-trial motions which were all denied.  Subsequently, he entered a plea guilty to a lesser and charge and then appealed the lower court’s denial of his motions.

The appellate court refused to rule on his appeal reasoning the “A plea of guilty is a complete admission of guilt...A defendant who enters a plea of guilty waives the right to appeal all nonjurisdictional issues arising at prior stages of the proceedings, although the defendant may contest the constitutionality of the plea itself. Ross v. Common Pleas Court of Auglaize Cty. (1972), 30 Ohio St.2d 323, 285 N.E.2d 25. "Thus, by entering a guilty plea, a defendant waives the right to raise on appeal the propriety of a trial court's suppression ruling." State v. McQueeney, 148 Ohio App.3d 606, 774 N.E.2d 1228, 2002 Ohio 3731, ¶13.

Therefore, once a defendant pleads guilty they waives all appealable issues other than the plea itself.  Therefore, be forewarned, if your intent is to appeal the findings of the lower court, an entry of no contest will preserve that right as it is not a complete admission of guilt but merely an admission to the facts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 9:09 am and is filed under Civil Liability, Constitutional Issues - General, Issues on Appeal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.