A decade of stagnancy

Lawmakers make few fixes despite flaws
Geoff Dutton, Columbus Dispatch, Sept. 17, 2006

Rhetoric and reality quickly collided after Ohio promised that juveniles would serve adult time for adult crimes.

But recognizing the shortcomings of the 1996 law has proved easier than fixing them.

In 1999, the Ohio Criminal Sentencing Commission issued a sweeping, 167-page juvenile justice report that noted the unintended effects of the law and offered a slate of solutions.

They included scaling back the crimes that qualify for mandatory transfer. The report recommended allowing juvenile courts to sentence defendants to detention centers until age 25, instead of 21.

Juvenile courts, the report concluded, should be empowered to hold a jury trial in some cases and give a defendant two sentences: a juvenile sentence and the possibility of adult punishment, including prison, if the teen doesn’t complete the requirements.

The goal was to create more "middle-ground options" to reduce transfers to adult court, said Scott Anderson, staff attorney for the sentencing commission.

In 2002, lawmakers enacted the so-called "blended sentencing" recommendation but none of the others. As a result, blended sentencing has been criticized as being of little use.

"It’s, in my view at least, kind of ridiculous," said Rob Northness, Fairfield County assistant prosecutor.

Rather than being an alternative to transferring cases to adult court, it has been used by some prosecutors for cases that don’t qualify for transfer, particularly those involving defendants younger than 14.

Since 2002, prosecutors statewide have sought blended sentences only 151 times, or barely three times a month. No agency tracks how many blended sentences have led to the adult portion being imposed.

"To my knowledge, one. It may be two now," said Dave Hejmanowski, a Delaware County juvenile magistrate who studies blending sentencing and has surveyed judges statewide.

So the process of trying juveniles as adults in Ohio remains riddled with inconsistencies and contradictions, perhaps more so now than before the 1996 law.

"That’s the difference in philosophy you get from county to county," Columbus defense lawyer Jefferson Liston said.

While accepting that assessment, not everyone views regional variations as a failure of the law so much as the reality of trying to impose statewide changes across locally controlled court systems.

"Justice always sounds bigger than a locale. Consistency is very important from that respect," Anderson said. But "local practice, local custom" has a way of trumping state mandates.