A person charged with aggravated murder and one or more specifications of an aggravating circumstance may, at trial, raise the matter of his age at the time of the alleged commission of the offense and may present evidence at trial that he was not eighteen years of age or older at the time of the alleged commission of the offense. The burdens of raising the matter of age, and of going forward with the evidence relating to the matter of age, are upon the defendant. After a defendant has raised the matter of age at trial, the prosecution shall have the burden of proving, by proof beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant was eighteen years of age or older at the time of the alleged commission of the offense.
Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2929.023
Raising the matter of age at trial
Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case State v. Martin (1985)
Most recently applied in State v. Woods (February 2024)
Effective: October 19, 1981; Latest Legislation: Senate Bill 1 - 114th General Assembly
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Ohio Laws & Administrative Rules (Legislative Service Commission). Reproduced from public-domain Ohio statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.