Dozens of advocates in Greater Cleveland Congregations shirts packed a state commission meeting Friday demanding that the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court be held accountable for assigning unqualified attorneys to represent children who face serious charges. 

“It’s demoralizing for the community to learn, as we have, that the very court judging our children is itself not following the law,” said Ginger Van Wagenen, a retired attorney and a member of the non-partisan group of more than 30 congregations and organizations.  

The Ohio Public Defender Commission oversees the state’s “indigent defense” system, which uses public money to pay attorneys to represent people – including children –  who cannot afford to hire their own lawyers. The state reimburses counties for the work of local public defenders and to pay private attorneys who take cases from the courts.

The commission has the authority to withhold reimbursements if it finds the way that court assigns attorneys violates state rules, according to an opinion from the Ohio Attorney General’s office. 

The commission did not commit to halt payments to the county at this point but is going to look into the number of times the court has assigned an unqualified attorney to represent a child in a court case. The commission cannot remove an attorney from a case. 

Advocates did get some answers. The juvenile court committed to monitoring the process judges and magistrates use to pick the attorneys will be more closely monitored and more transparent. 

The court is “taking this issue seriously,” Sarah Cigic, the court’s chief legal counsel told the commission over Zoom during the meeting. None of the court’s judges or administrators attended the meeting in person. Administrative Judge Thomas F. O’Malley signed an order June 3 outlining the new process for routinely tracking attorney assignments made by judges and magistrates and making yearly adjustments to make sure the court has an “equitable distribution” of assignments. 

Cigic also said that, now, in order to get appointed to juvenile court cases, attorneys will have to provide proof annually that they have the required education and trial experience.  Previously, the court operated on an honor system, allowing attorneys to self-certify that they had  taken legal education classes. It told them not to submit any documentation unless asked. 

A recent court review found dozens of attorneys who didn’t meet some qualifications. 

Now, the court only has four private attorneys who can handle cases where children are charged with murder and other high-level felonies. 

The commission asked the juvenile court to provide more information on whether unqualified attorneys are currently representing children in ongoing cases before it meets again in September. Cigic said she did not know how many children in recent years or currently were represented by attorneys who didn’t meet state standards. 

“Don’t be fooled by the ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, we’re working on it thing’,” Rev. King Rodgers of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland told the commission.

Black boys most often sent to adult court

For more than two years, Greater Cleveland Congregations has worked to examine why so many children from Cuyahoga County, particularly Black boys, have their criminal cases transferred to adult court and end up in adult prisons. In some cases, if the charges are serious, the transfer is mandatory. Other times, the decision is left up to a juvenile judge, a process called a discretionary bindover. 

The quality of representation can make a difference in that process, according to GCC, which has gathered data, met with judges and attorneys and observed dozens of juvenile court cases. 

 A report published by the Wren Collective, a policy reform group, last year raised questions about the quality of representation children were getting from court-appointed attorneys. 

The report also noted that county public defenders were not used often enough by the court even though they had more resources, including social workers and investigators, and were more likely than appointed attorneys to convince judges that children could be rehabilitated in the juvenile system. 

The Cuyahoga County Public Defender’s office in recent years has said that it could handle more of those serious cases – and that it had a better track record of keeping children from being transferred to adult court. At Friday’s meeting, Public Defender Cullen Sweeney said the court had gone from assigning his office about a third of cases to 43% and that could rise to about half of cases this year. The office has 28 attorneys who represent children and their parents in court cases. 

Complaints that a handful of attorneys got a lopsided number of cases from judges and magistrates at juvenile court have bubbled up for decades. Greater Cleveland Congregations said it believes campaign donations to judges play a role. The court has said it assigned attorneys who are reliable and experienced and willing to spend long days in juvenile court handling complicated cases. 

Unlike courts in other large counties, juvenile court judges and magistrates in Cuyahoga County directly select attorneys, which runs counter to state rules that say the selection should be “independent from individual influence by a member of the judiciary, anyone involved in prosecuting criminal cases, or any elected official.” 

In Franklin County, all cases first go to the public defender’s office. If there is a conflict, a clerk distributes the cases to vetted attorneys who take turns sitting in court waiting for assignments. In Hamilton County, the public defender’s office doles out cases to qualified private attorneys when it has a conflict. 

A Marshall Project – Cleveland report in March revealed the extent to which the court – and certain judges – picked the same attorneys again and again to represent children accused of crimes. In the year ending September 2023, judges and court staff gave more than two-thirds of the delinquency cases to 10 private attorneys. Those attorneys are paid with public money, and some made hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years representing children and their parents in all types of juvenile court cases.

GCC members will continue to push the court and the commission to use the power they have to improve the system for children, Keisha Krumm, the group’s lead organizer and executive director said. 

“If we continue to force our children to face trial with substandard counsel, with attorneys who are not qualified to represent them, we deny their rights,” said Ryan Wallace, senior pastor at Fairmount Presbyterian Church in Cleveland Heights. “We deny them equal protection under the law. We deny their humanity, and we violate the most fundamental tenet of our democracy.”

The Marshall Project – Cleveland’s Doug Livingston contributed to this report.