Local and statewide advocates are asking the Ohio Public Defender Commission to investigate the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court’s assigned-counsel system and withhold funding from the court if it’s not complying with state law.
Community groups and nonprofit organizations shared two related concerns in letters and at last week’s commission meeting. They want the commission to look into the juvenile court’s case-assignment process. They also asked the commission to determine whether the court is ensuring that private attorneys representing children in the most serious cases are qualified.
The Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court doesn’t collect and check on those credentials, according to the assigned counsel application.
The court’s judges assign some cases to private attorneys, and many of them go to a few attorneys, according to a recent analysis from The Marshall Project – Cleveland. State law requires a “rotary” system to equally distribute cases.
“Unfortunately, the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court fails to ensure that the private attorneys on its assigned counsel list meet state standards to represent children facing bindover,” according to a letter to the commission signed by The Children’s Law Center, NAACP Cleveland, Building Freedom Ohio, Juvenile Justice Coalition, ACLU Ohio and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association.
A bindover is when a child is transferred to adult court. There are two types of bindovers in Ohio.
Mandatory bindovers are required by law based on the age and seriousness of a crime.
Discretionary bindovers are based on a judge’s decision about whether a child can be rehabilitated in juvenile court.
The letter was released Friday, the day of the commission’s quarterly meeting. Advocates also traveled to Columbus to speak at the meeting.
Rev. King Rodgers of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church said the current practice of judges selecting attorneys is “making the judge an employer and the defense attorney the employee.”
Rev. Rodgers is also a member of Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC), a coalition of more than 30 congregations and organizations that advocate for social justice issues.
‘We want all the kids to get great attorneys’
In December, The Wren Collective, a strategic advising firm focused on the criminal legal system, released a report raising questions about whether children accused of crimes in Cuyahoga County are getting the best possible legal representation. The report also suggested that the court’s system for assigning private attorneys is influenced by the preferences of judges.
On Friday, The Marshall Project – Cleveland reported that in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court, “judges steered two-thirds of cases involving kids accused of crimes to just 10 lawyers in one year.”
Nikki Baszynski, an attorney and a former state public defender and the Wren Collective report’s lead author, commented at a commission meeting that day.
Referencing The Marshall Project article, Baszynski said while the court plans to change how cases are assigned, it’s not enough.
“We don’t know what that change is going to look like, who’s going to enforce it, who’s going to monitor compliance and even whether it will comply with the Ohio Administrative Code,” she said.
The Marshall Project article stated that the court asked attorneys on the assigned-counsel list to reapply. But Baszynski said she checked about two weeks ago, and the application, which was updated in December, still didn’t require attorneys to show they’re qualified to represent children in the most serious cases.
The Wren Collective’s review of continuing legal education found that more than half of attorneys listed as qualified to handle bindover cases in August 2023 did not appear to meet the requirements set by the state. That information is tracked by the Ohio Supreme Court.
“We want all the kids to get great attorneys,” Baszynski said. “They’re either gonna get a public defender, [or] they’re gonna get a private attorney. If it’s a private attorney, we need judges out of that assignment process and we need to make sure that [attorneys are] actually qualified to take those cases.”
Letters ask commission to halt funding
The letter signed by several organizations was one of three addressed to the commission Friday.
The Gault Center, a national non-profit that supports public defenders who represent youth, also wrote a letter asking the commission to investigate the county’s practices, adding, “if you find that the court is not in compliance with the Ohio Administrative Code, to withhold state funding until Cuyahoga County remedies this situation.”
Greater Cleveland Congregations was more upfront.
“Ohio Public Defender’s Commission should end its reimbursement of Cuyahoga County’s juvenile court appointments because they are violating Ohio law,” GCC’s news release said.
Cid Standifer, a freelance data analyst and journalist, looked at court-assigned counsel data for Greater Cleveland Congregations and found that “all of the attorneys who made more than $90,000 between May 2021 and April 2022 as appointed attorneys in juvenile court also donated to juvenile judges’ election campaigns.”
‘There’s a sense of urgency’
William Creedon, chair of the Ohio Public Defender Commission, said the topic would be on the commission’s June meeting agenda. He said the commission needs to be careful about withholding funds because it could harm Ohioans’ quality of representation.
“Please know that we’re going to take a very balanced approach and that we’re going to do a thorough investigation,” Creedon said. In response to a question, he then clarified that the commission would work with the Ohio Public Defender Office and decide how to move forward.
“As we’ve seen today there’s lots of data, there are lots of variables and lots of layers to this and we will do our best to work through that,” he said. “I understand there’s a sense of urgency, so I don’t want it to feel like we’re putting this off.”