By Darrel Rowland
The Columbus Dispatch
COLUMBUS, Ohio — Flattening the tires of an ambulance speeding to an emergency.
Blowing up a city waterline.
Smashing a single cell phone.
All are potential violations of a state law against disrupting public service, a unanimous Ohio Supreme Court ruled yesterday in a precedent-setting ruling.
Raynell Robinson of Marysville was convicted of the fourth-degree felony for destroying a cell phone being used by his nephew, Antonio Robinson, to summon help after Raynell had assaulted Antonio during a late-night fight in September 2006.
The 3rd District Court of Appeals threw out the conviction, saying the law was designed to apply only to large-scale disruptions of public service. But the high court reinstated the conviction with yesterday’s 13-page decision.
“The plain language of (the law) does not limit its application to the interference with public emergency systems and utilities on a large scale, as the 3rd District found,” wrote Justice Maureen O’Connor in the majority opinion.
Even an act as small as smashing a cell phone can be a violation “if that conduct substantially impairs the ability of law enforcement officers, firefighters, rescue personnel, emergency-medical-services personnel, or emergency-facility personnel to respond to an emergency or to protect and preserve any person or property from serious physical harm,” the court declared.
This is the first case in which Ohio’s highest court weighed in on whether the law applies to an act such as destroying a single cell phone. While the 3rd District court ruled it didn’t, three other Ohio appeals courts had decided the opposite.
Raynell Robinson, 37, was sentenced to two years in prison for witness intimidation and 15 months for disrupting public service by wrecking the phone. His attorneys contended that Robinson was not guilty because help already was on the way after an earlier, abbreviated 911 call from the nephew, and arrived within minutes of the phone being destroyed.
But the law “does not require proof of a substantial impairment of the officers’ response time. The pertinent inquiry is directed toward their ability to respond,” O’Connor wrote.
“Antonio was only able to tell the 911 dispatcher that he was at the Meadows (apartment complex) and that his face had been injured. When Robinson smashed the phone and disconnected the call, the dispatcher was attempting to elicit a more specific location from Antonio.”
O’Connor said police had to search the sprawling Marysville apartment complex and ask neighbors before they found the fight scene. In the meantime, she said, the uncle continued to assault his nephew and threatened to kill anyone who called law enforcement.
Copyright 2009 The Columbus Dispatch