Capstone: from facts to charges in a Port Ardent case file

The last lesson brings the course together in the way officers actually use criminal law: starting from a messy set of facts and working toward charges that will survive in court. Ms. Liu hands each student a copy of a closed Port Ardent file, with names changed, from a Saturday night in the entertainment district. It contains officers' notes, three witness statements, a booking record, a hospital report, a list of seized property and twenty minutes of video from a bar's cameras. The students' task is the one Ms. Liu performs every week: decide what offenses the evidence supports, which charges should be laid, and what is missing. This lesson walks through the method, then the file, and ends with the written product, a charge synopsis like the ones officers submit to the prosecutor.

How charging decisions are made

In the United States, police arrest on probable cause, but the charging decision belongs to the prosecutor, who files a complaint or, for felonies in Ohio, seeks an indictment from a grand jury, since Article I, Section 10 of the Ohio Constitution requires indictment for felonies unless the defendant waives it. Under Ohio Criminal Rule 3, a complaint is a written statement of the essential facts constituting the offense charged, made upon oath before an officer authorized to administer oaths. The American Bar Association's Criminal Justice Standards say a prosecutor should file charges only when there is probable cause and when admissible evidence will be sufficient to support conviction beyond a reasonable doubt, and many prosecutor's offices apply that higher standard in practice. The officer's job is to make an arrest supported by probable cause and to give the prosecutor a file that can be assessed against that standard. Overcharging to gain leverage in plea bargaining is something professional standards discourage.

Ms. Liu's method, which the class has practiced all term, has four steps. First, write out the facts as a neutral timeline, without legal conclusions. Second, list every offense the facts might support, starting from the most serious. Third, for each offense, write the elements one per line and, beside each, the evidence that proves it and its source. Fourth, decide which charges to lay, considering lesser included offenses, overlapping offenses and the evidence that is still missing. She says the most common failure is skipping step one and going straight to a charge, because once an officer has decided what the offense is, he or she starts to see only the evidence that fits.

Included and overlapping offenses

Two rules shape how many charges to lay. The first is the rule on lesser included offenses: under Criminal Rule 31(C) and the test in State v. Deem (1988), an offense is lesser included if it carries a lesser penalty, the greater offense cannot be committed without the lesser also being committed, and some element of the greater offense is not required for the lesser, so felonious assault includes assault and aggravated robbery includes theft. A jury can convict of a lesser included offense even if only the greater is charged. The second is the allied offenses statute, R.C. 2941.25: where the same conduct can be construed to constitute two or more allied offenses of similar import, the indictment may contain counts for all of them, but the defendant may be convicted of only one; under State v. Ruff (2015), offenses are not allied if they involve separate victims, are committed separately or with separate animus, or cause separate and identifiable harm. Prosecutors therefore charge broadly, and courts merge allied offenses at sentencing. The practical rule for officers is the same in both systems: lay the charges the evidence supports, describe the facts that distinguish them, and let the prosecutor decide the final shape.

The file: Saturday night on Front Street

Here is the neutral timeline the class builds from the file. At 12:52 a.m., a man the file calls R.T. and his friend arrive at a bar on Front Street. Video shows R.T. drinking steadily. At 1:31 a.m., R.T. picks up a phone left on the bar by another customer, the complainant K.M., looks at it and puts it in his pocket. At 1:34 a.m., K.M. notices the phone is missing and asks R.T. if he has it; video shows R.T. shaking his head. At 1:36 a.m., K.M. reaches toward R.T.'s pocket; R.T. pushes him away, picks up a beer bottle and strikes K.M. on the side of the head, then says, according to two witnesses, touch me again and you're dead. K.M. falls, bleeding. R.T. walks out. At 1:41 a.m., Constable Malhotra, responding to the 911 call, stops R.T. a block away. R.T. first gives the name of his brother. A pat-down incident to arrest finds K.M.'s phone and a small bag containing eleven pills later analyzed as oxycodone. At the station, R.T.'s real name is confirmed by fingerprints; records show he is on bond for a theft case with a condition to obey all laws. The hospital report shows K.M. needed eight stitches and had a mild concussion.

Jesse Morningstar points out that the timeline contains no legal words at all, not assault or theft or threat, only what people did and when. Ms. Liu says that is exactly the point: the timeline is what the evidence shows, and everything else is analysis.

Working through the chart produces several conclusions. The blow with a beer bottle used as a weapon supports felonious assault under R.C. 2903.11(A)(2), a second-degree felony, because the bottle was used as a deadly weapon and caused physical harm. Because the blow came while R.T. was resisting K.M.'s attempt to recover the phone, robbery under R.C. 2911.02 is also supported, with the bottle as a deadly weapon and physical harm both present. The words you're dead support aggravated menacing. The oxycodone, a Schedule II drug, supports aggravated possession of drugs, a fifth-degree felony below the bulk amount. Giving his brother's name supports falsification and, because it hampered the arrest, possibly obstructing official business. The new offenses violate his bond. Amara notices that one moment in the timeline, the blow at 1:36, supports four of the charges, and Ms. Liu says that is why the video's exact sequence is the most important evidence in the file.

Linh turns the chart into a short program that checks which elements of each candidate charge have evidence from at least one source, and lists what is still missing. Her version uses the file's facts directly.

# Elements chart for the Front Street file (Ohio Revised Code, simplified)
evidence = {
    "video shows R.T. take phone": True, "phone found on R.T.": True, "K.M. identifies phone": True,
    "video shows blow with bottle": True, "witnesses saw blow": True, "hospital report": True,
    "bottle seized": True, "witnesses heard threat": True, "pills found on search": True,
    "lab confirms oxycodone": False, "notes record false name": True, "fingerprint ID": True,
    "copy of bond order": False,
}
charges = {
    "robbery, R.C. 2911.02": [["video shows R.T. take phone", "phone found on R.T."],
                              ["video shows blow with bottle", "witnesses saw blow"]],
    "felonious assault, R.C. 2903.11(A)(2)": [["video shows blow with bottle", "witnesses saw blow"],
                                              ["bottle seized", "hospital report"]],
    "aggravated menacing, R.C. 2903.21": [["witnesses heard threat"]],
    "aggravated possession, R.C. 2925.11": [["pills found on search"], ["lab confirms oxycodone"]],
    "falsification, R.C. 2921.13": [["notes record false name"], ["fingerprint ID"]],
    "bond violation": [["copy of bond order"], ["pills found on search"]],
}
for charge, elements in charges.items():
    missing = [e for e in elements if not any(evidence[s] for s in e)]
    status = "ready" if not missing else "missing: " + "; ".join(" or ".join(m) for m in missing)
    print(f"{charge:44s} {status}")

robbery, R.C. 2911.02                        ready
felonious assault, R.C. 2903.11(A)(2)        ready
aggravated menacing, R.C. 2903.21            ready
aggravated possession, R.C. 2925.11          missing: lab confirms oxycodone
falsification, R.C. 2921.13                  ready
bond violation                               missing: copy of bond order

The output shows four charges ready and two waiting on documents: the drug possession charge needs the lab analysis, and the bond violation needs a copy of the order showing the condition. Neither is unusual. Police often file drug charges on a field test or the pills' markings and supplement the file with the lab report, which Ohio law allows as prima facie evidence under R.C. 2925.51, and they obtain bond records from the court. The point is that the file tells the officer exactly what to follow up on.

Writing the charge synopsis

The final product is a prosecutor's case summary, usually one or two pages, that tells the story in plain language and connects each charge to the evidence. Professor Desjardins has read thousands of them and says the good ones share these features:

• A one-paragraph summary at the top: who, what, when and where, and the charges recommended.
• A neutral, chronological narrative with times, written in the first person for the officer's own observations and attributed for everything else (witness A states...).
• For each charge, the section, the elements and the evidence that proves each element, including any weaknesses.
• The grounds for each police action: the stop, the detention, the arrest, the search and the seizure of each item.
• Rights advice and any statements made, with times and exact words where possible.
• A list of evidence and witnesses, outstanding items such as the lab analysis or video still to be obtained, and discovery notes such as body camera footage.
• Victim information, including injuries, the impact of the offense and any concerns about bond, and the accused's record and release status.

Priya, reading her draft aloud, realizes she has written that R.T. stole the phone and then assaulted K.M. to keep it, which is a legal conclusion, not a fact. Ms. Liu suggests the factual version: at 1:36 a.m., K.M. reached toward R.T.'s right jacket pocket, where the phone was later found; R.T. pushed K.M.'s arm away, picked up a beer bottle from the bar and struck K.M. on the left side of the head. The legal conclusion goes in the charge analysis, where it can be supported element by element.

What the course has built

Over twelve lessons, the class has moved from the sources of criminal law to the elements of offenses, the forms of participation, offenses against the person, sexual offenses and harassment, property crimes, weapons, drugs and public order, and the defenses. Each topic has added to the same skill: reading a provision carefully, breaking it into elements, and matching each element to evidence. That skill will be used in every course that follows, from LES-111 on the Constitution and LES-112 on police powers to the investigation courses in second year. Marco says he expected a law course to be about memorizing sections, and that he was surprised how much of it is about thinking clearly under pressure. Professor Desjardins says that is the job.