In State v. Hill, the court reversed the Eleventh District Court of Appeals, which had ruled that a Civ.R. 60(B) motion was the appropriate vehicle for seeking relief from a civil judgment entered on a postconviction petition. The majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice Kennedy, concluded that because postconviction proceedings are special statutory proceedings created in 1965, the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure do not apply when they are clearly inapplicable to the statutory scheme.
The dispute centers on Danny Hill, who was convicted of aggravated arson, kidnapping, rape, felonious sexual penetration, and aggravated murder with a capital specification for the 1985 torture and killing of 12-year-old Raymond Fife. Hill has repeatedly challenged his conviction and sentence, including multiple claims regarding intellectual disability under Atkins v. Virginia, which prohibits the execution of intellectually disabled individuals.
Hill filed a Civ.R. 60(B) motion in Trumbull County Court of Common Pleas seeking to vacate the 2006 judgment that denied his initial postconviction petition. He argued that the trial court had applied an incorrect legal standard for intellectual disability and submitted a new affidavit from the psychologist who had served as the State’s expert during earlier proceedings stating that Hill is intellectually disabled.
The trial court recast the motion as a successive postconviction petition and denied it as untimely, holding that Hill failed to show he was unavoidably prevented from discovering the facts. The Eleventh District reversed, holding that Civ.R. 60(B) was the proper mechanism to challenge the prior postconviction judgment, and remanded for a determination on the merits of that motion.
The Ohio Supreme Court disagreed, emphasizing that R.C. 2953.21(K) explicitly designates the postconviction statute as the exclusive remedy for collateral challenges to convictions or sentences. The court reasoned that allowing a Civ.R. 60(B) motion to function as a successive postconviction petition would contravene the statutory purpose of providing one defined method for raising such claims.
Consequently, the court held that successive petitions for postconviction relief must conform to the requirements of R.C. 2953.21 and R.C. 2953.23, rather than the civil rules. The case was remanded to the Eleventh District for consideration of Hill’s remaining assignment of error regarding whether he met the statutory requirements for a second postconviction petition.
Justice Brunner concurred, noting that while the procedural ruling closes a potential loophole, she expressed concern about the State's position in preventing Hill from having his Atkins claim properly adjudicated under current legal standards, citing substantial evidence of intellectual disability. Justice Deters also concurred, emphasizing the injustice to the victim’s family caused by decades of delay in achieving finality.