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Ohio Rev. Code Ann. § 2941.1413

Mandatory additional prison term for felony OVI violation precluded unless charging instrument specifies prior convictions

Known as the Judy's Law

The act spans §§ 2941–2941 (87 sections).

Applied in 5 court decisions — leading case State v. Hoekwatter (2025)

Most recently applied in State v. Vanvalkenburg (December 2025)

Effective: April 4, 2023; Latest Legislation: Senate Bill 288 - 134th General Assembly

How often courts cite this section

2023202520
citing decisions per year

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.

(A) Imposition of a mandatory additional prison term of one, two, three, four, or five years upon an offender under division (G)(2) of section 2929.13 of the Revised Code is precluded unless the indictment, count in the indictment, or information charging a felony violation of division (A) of section 4511.19 of the Revised Code specifies that either:

(1) The offender, within twenty years of the offense, previously has been convicted of or pleaded guilty to five or more equivalent offenses ;

(2) The offender previously has been convicted of or pleaded guilty to a specification of the type described in this section.

(B) The specification shall be stated at the end of the body of the indictment, count, or information and shall be stated in substantially the following form:

"SPECIFICATION (or, SPECIFICATION TO THE FIRST COUNT). The Grand Jurors (or insert the person's or the prosecuting attorney's name when appropriate) further find and specify that (set forth that the offender, within twenty years of committing the offense, previously had been convicted of or pleaded guilty to five or more equivalent offenses or previously has been convicted of or pleaded guilty to a specification of the type described in section 2941.1413 of the Revised Code)."

(C) As used in this section, "equivalent offense" has the same meaning as in section 4511.181 of the Revised Code.

Last updated March 9, 2023 at 9:08 AM

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.