A unanimous Ohio Supreme Court dealt another blow last month to a Putnam County man seeking to dismiss an aggravated murder charge that has been pending against him since 2016.
On January 20, the seven-member Court declined to hear arguments from 39-year-old Travis Soto, of Napoleon, on whether the Putnam County Prosecutor’s Office improperly reneged on the parties’ plea agreement by criminally charging Soto — for a second time — with the death of his two-year-old son.
Soto served a five-year sentence for child endangerment related to his son’s 2006 death. Soto’s release was short-lived; shortly afterward, in 2016, he returned to Putnam County law enforcement with a different story — prompting prosecutors to charge Soto with the enhanced crime of aggravated murder, among other offenses.
Since then, Soto has yet to be put on trial and remains in pre-trial detention.
Soto’s defense attorneys have tried, to no avail, to challenge his murder prosecution on grounds that his Double Jeopardy and contractual rights bestowed by the parties’ plea bargain were violated.
The State, on the other hand, contends that Soto’s lies to investigators and staging of the crime scene amounted to a breach of the plea bargain.
After both the Ohio Supreme Court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Soto’s arguments on grounds of Double Jeopardy and the contractual rights bestowed by a plea bargain, Soto’s defense to his pending murder charge remains in limbo.
At issue, too, is Soto’s competency. On February 6, Soto’s counsel filed a motion in Putnam County for a hearing on Soto’s third request for a competency evaluation — raising the question of whether he is capable of standing trial.
Soto pleads guilty to child endangerment in 2006, serves five years in prison
In 2006, Soto’s wife called 911 to report the death of their two-year-old son. Soto admitted to authorities that, while driving his ATV around his property, he ran over his toddler by mistake. The State of Ohio later charged Soto with child endangerment and involuntary manslaughter.
The parties entered a plea: In exchange for the State’s dismissal of Sotos’ manslaughter charge, Soto agreed to plead guilty to child endangerment. The State thereby dismissed the manslaughter charge, sentencing Soto to a five-year prison term.
Soto served the entirety of his sentence and was released from prison in 2011.
It was not long, however, before Soto wound up back in a jail cell.
In 2016, five years after his release, Soto arrived at the Putnam County Sheriff’s Office and made a damning confession: His son’s death was not an accident. Instead, Soto admitted to beating the child to death — “really tortur[ing] the boy[.]”
The confession Soto made to law enforcement in 2016, his attorneys argued, marked the fourth version Soto had told authorities since he was originally prosecuted in 2006.
As a result of the newfound details, State opened a new criminal case against Soto—this time, charging him with aggravated murder for his son’s death.
Courts previously rejected Soto’s Double Jeopardy arguments
Soto’s attorneys argued that a defendant’s Double Jeopardy rights attach at the moment the plea bargain is entered. Neither the Ohio Supreme Court nor the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals accepted that argument.
At the crux of the latest dispute before the Ohio Supreme Court — which was rejected by the unanimous bench on January 20 — was the breach-of-contract argument posed by Soto’s counsel.
Because the State failed to expressly reserve the right to bring additional charges in Soto’s plea agreement, Soto’s counsel argued that its prosecutors are barred from pursuing a second criminal case against Soto for the same incident.
Allowing the State to bring additional charges ten years after the original conviction, Soto’s counsel argue, effectively deprives defendants of the finality of plea agreements and enables Ohio prosecutors to more readily bring additional charges against those who enter plea deals.
Soto’s counsel further argue that law enforcement officials were aware in 2006 that Soto was not entirely truthful with investigators; nevertheless, the State “stuck its head in the sand” and moved forward with the lesser child-endangerment charge.
The Putnam County Prosecutor’s Office rejects this assertion, claiming instead that the State was not on notice of the possibility that new charges might be filed, as Soto’s 2006 testimony had, at the time, lined up with the physical injuries sustained by his son.
The State also argued that Soto’s lies to investigators and crime-scene staging undermined the basis of his 2006 plea deal, such that Soto himself breached the plea deal — thereby justifying the new criminal charges.