CLEVELAND — The Greater Cleveland Congregations (GCC) is concerned that some low-income juvenile offenders are not receiving the quality legal representation they deserve in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court.
Rev. King Rodgers with the GCC and Olivet Institutional Baptist Church told News 5 he believes, in some instances, Cuyahoga County Juvenile judges are assigning private attorneys to felony juvenile cases who don't have the proper state qualifications or training, leaving some juvenile defendants with subpar representation.
"They’re not using the rotary system as described in Ohio Revised Code 120-1-10, and the issue is they’re all going to jail with inadequate representation and that’s a problem for us and a problem for the community," Rodgers said. “It's not proper, that’s not just, if you’re not qualified you should not be used and because of that these juveniles are going to jail.”
Data analyst Cid Standifer pointed to two reports from The Marshall Project and The Wren Collective, which cited state reimbursement data that indicated that in one year, Cuyahoga Juvenile Court judges steered two-thirds of cases involving juveniles accused of crimes to just 10 lawyers and that the court is underutilizing the public defender.
Standifer told News 5 that inappropriate policies are depriving poor kids of the best counsel available and that she believes the court doesn't adequately check to make sure attorneys assigned have all the proper state training.
“They don’t ask them to prove that they’ve met the state's qualifications for what experience and training you should have to take these cases and be reimbursed by the public defender; they just have to check a box and say 'yes, I’m qualified,'" Standifer said. “In order to take juvenile cases involving third, fourth and fifth-degree felonies, they are supposed to have at least 12 hours of continuing legal education credits in criminal practice and procedure, and 6 of those have to be in juvenile practices and procedures.”
Standifer also believes the current system that allows judges to assign attorneys carries a conflict of interest issue.
"The attorneys that are getting appointed to those cases are routinely also donating to judges, sometimes very large amounts, for example out of the top ten earners, four of them are also in the top ten donors," Standifer said. “That judges are hiring people that donate to their campaigns to represent poor kids, any person on the street is going to see that that’s a problem, that is a conflict of interest.”
Ryan Wallace, Senior Pastor at Fairmount Presbyterian Church, told News 5 that the GCC hopes the Ohio Public Defender's office will handle more felony juvenile cases in Cuyahoga County. He said the office is more qualified to handle juvenile felony cases, a verbal promise Wallace said the court has so far failed to live up to.
“A little over a year ago the juvenile judges made an informal agreement to give about 40% of the cases to the public defenders office, but they haven’t actually changed the rules," Wallace said. “We need number one that the process is fair, that the judges are following state code about who should be assigning the attorneys in an unbiased way, and number two, we want to make sure that the attorneys being assigned to represent our kids are actually qualified to do it.”
The GCC is now calling on the Ohio Public Defender Commission to investigate attorney assignment practices at Cuyahoga Juvenile Court and withhold state reimbursement payments to the court until there are policy changes.
The State Public Defender Commission responded quickly to News 5 and said it would not move to put reimbursements on hold while it starts to look into court practices. Ohio Public Defender Commission Chair William Creedon issued the following statement:
“The commission needs to act carefully because withholding reimbursement funds could end up harming the quality of representation for indigent Ohioan’s charged with a crime. As the commission heard at its last quarterly commission meeting, there is lots of data, numerous variables, and multiple layers to this issue, and we will do our best to work through it. The commission is going to take a very balanced approach and is working with the Office of the Ohio Public Defender to decide how to move forward.”
Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court responded quickly to News 5 and defended its attorney hiring practices.
The court said in a statement, " A rotary system may provide an equitable distribution of assignments, but it does not always ensure equitable representation." The court said, " When one closely examines the court’s assigned counsel list, the reality is a much smaller pool of attorneys than it appears. Only about half of the attorneys on the list are available and practice in our court on a daily basis."
The court issued the following additional statement:
"Granting case assignment responsibility to the Public Defender does not make the process less political—it just shifts it to an unelected office that is not answerable to the voters.
"It is our hope is that we can increase the number of available, experienced, and reliable attorneys interested in practicing juvenile law."
"We recently asked attorneys on the assigned counsel list to resubmit applications and update their qualifications. Of the 95 attorneys on the list at the beginning of this year, only 57 have since reapplied—reducing the list by 40%."
The court did reveal that changes in the attorney selection process are on the way and further told News 5:
"By the end of 2024, we will modify our assignment process. Additionally, we will create a new position (similar to a recently posted Franklin County position – see below) in our legal department dedicated to implementing and monitoring the new process and documenting exceptions. We will likely still face challenges considering the small pool of attorneys we have to handle thousands of cases. Our hope is that we can increase the number of available, experienced, and reliable attorneys interested in practicing juvenile law."
Still, Wallace and the GCC are demanding changes in the attorney selection process be made as soon as possible.
"I don’t think that’s an excuse for assigning unqualified attorneys to represent our kids, who is better positioned to know who’s qualified to represent these cases than the public defenders office, who do this day in and day out," Wallace said. “Sending these kids for 5, 10, 20 years into the adult prison system and then asking them to come back into our community to contribute is just going to lead to recidivism, it's going to lead to more violence.”
News 5 is committed in following through on this developing story.
