Cuyahoga County’s Court of Common Pleas- Juvenile Division: The Court Working to Change a Community

Protesters, a teenager visibly upset-held back by what looks like a parent, and people filing in and out by the minute. This is the scene at Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas- Juvenile Division on Tuesday. The court is smack-dab in the middle of a Cleveland neighborhood and one of the busiest I’ve ever been in.

With my cell phone, keys, and belt all unloaded unto the security belt, I unwrangled my belongings as I walked through the metal detector and headed up to Judge Denise Rini’s courtroom.

Judge Rini’s Magistrate, Je’Nine Nickerson greeted me and told me the charges for today’s trial. A second degree felony, burglary (F-2) and a misdemeanor of the first degree (M-1), petty theft.

“This is his first criminal case he was 14 at the time in April he turned 15 and then petty theft,” Nickerson said. “A gaming system it looks like he took so it was less than a thousand bucks.”

Judge Rini walking into the courtroom seconds later, not missing a beat in a hunter-green ensemble and her royal blue robe.

The defendant, a 15-year-old boy. He wore a purple shirt, untucked with khakis and grey vans. His nervous tick was on full display, finger-biting. At some points he even rested his head on the rest.

By law, juvenile criminal records aren’t public, but in Cuyahoga County, which covers all of Cleveland and the surrounding areas, the numbers speak for themselves

According the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas-Juvenile Division  annual reports, from 2011 to 2016, crime juvenile’s committed increased by 300 percent. Felonious assault was up 156 percent and robbery up by about 344 percent.

In 2003, there were 24 juveniles charged in homicides. In 2008 the number was 48.  Last year, in 2017, 72 juveniles were charged in connection to a homicide.

On the issue, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley has stopped just short of calling it an all-out war. In 2017, he called youth ages 14 to 21 “crime drivers”. He also said the community is under siege by juvenile violence.

Pretty strong language, but it’s language the prosecutor’s Juvenile Division Chief Greg Mussan defends.

“With respect to crime driver question I can think of one specific case, which You know, echos prosecutor O’Malley’s statement, Mussan said. “There was one man who was 14-years-old who committed 20 aggravated robberies in 30 days. Specifically in one case he high-jacked a mother and her children and when the seven year old son tried to protect his mother, the 14-year-old male put a gun to the 7-year-old’s head. This example is exactly one of the shadows of violent crime that we have in the community.”

That’s where the juvenile court comes in, Judge Rini said.

“Most people believe that juvenile court, they’ll never see the court, so they don’t even think about it. They don’t how many judges there are in this court,” Rini said. “They don’t know how many magistrates they don’t know what kind of cases we handle. They don’t know the fact that we handle over 5,000 youth and 23-hundred come from the inner city and 25-hundred come from the suburbs.”

Judges of the Juvenile Court have jurisdiction over cases concerning children under the age of 18. The Court also hears cases concerning the abuse, neglect or dependency of children. With so many different coverage areas, Judge Rini said every day is different.

From spending the day with the judge I noticed how busy the court is. In the middle our our interview, she was interrupted by her bailiff about an urgent issue. Judge Rini immediately went, took care of the issue, and jumped right back to talk to me.

“For some reason I have been getting motions to transfer youth that are 14 and 15 years old that don’t have criminal history or they don’t have an extensive records or there’s no guns involved,” Rini explained. There’s no possible way they’ll be transferred to the general division. We are juvenile court. We have jurisdiction until they’re 21. We are for rehabilitation so I don’t under why we as a community would want to have children tried as an adult that young. “

The youngest to appear in Judge Rini’s courtroom was 8-years-old, she told me.

“It’s frustrating when I clearly see a 10-year-old who’s feet can’t even touch the ground as he sits in the chair,” she said.

That reality begs the question of why. Why do these young people commit such adult-like heinous crimes? To answer that, I turned to Dr. Susan Kunkle. She’s been involved with the juvenile justice system since 1970, working for Portage County Juvenile Court as a Probation Officer. She’s continued her work into today as a professor and speaker at Kent State.

“I sometimes think they truly don’t understand the consequences of what they’re doing,” Kunkle said.

I asked what she meant by that. One could argue of course, that young people, despite age, should know.Wrong is wrong, but Dr. Krunkle says research indicates that there are different stages a person child goes through on the path to maturity.

“We see that spontaneity, we see that at risk behavior, we see I want to do this, I want to get involved with that and then as young people begin to get a little bit older and a little bit more mature they suddenly say to themselves, you know what, I’d like to go to college or I’d like to get a good job and then they begin to think a little bit more and they go, you know I’d like to get married. I’d like to have a family .I’d like to have a house, I’d like to be a part of a family. I want to be apart of a neighborhood I want to do all of these things and then suddenly all that spontaneity all that at- risk behavior all of those impulsive kinds of things that they did when they were younger they mature out,” Kunkle said.

Judge Rini says it is at that midpoint between childhood and taking responsibility for one’s actions that the juvenile justice system comes in. The court has the options to release youth back into society, admit them to Ohio Department of Youth Services (ODYS), other support programs, or bind them over to the adult system.

“For me it’s the most important court there is. It’s the court where we can make a difference,” Rini said.

For the county prosecutor’s, It is that exact balance, between a child’s second chance and the potential safety of a community that hangs in question.

“There has to be consequences for actions and although brains are still being developed, the core question comes down to right and wrong,” Mussan said. “Some crimes are so bad that you should be held accountable for that. Every case is entirely different but if you commit a mass shooting you should always be accountable for such a heinous crime.”

For Judge Rini there’s another underlying problem that needs to be addressed.

Judge Rini is leaving the juvenile court at the end of the year after losing a tightly contested election. She was first elected to the court in November 2012 and says in her six year term there the results are the real story.

“When I get a kid reach out to me on Facebook and say I just want to thank you if it wasn’t for you I’d probably be dead or in jail. That’s success,” Rini said.

In today’s trial, the kid got off- a second chance he promised the court they wouldn’t regret.