Not ‘Mini-Adult Court’: Lawyers Lacking Qualifications Defended 1,200 Cuyahoga County Kids

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their Cleveland newsletter and follow them on Instagram, TikTok, Reddit and Facebook.

More than 1,200 children accused of serious crimes in Cuyahoga County since 2020 were defended by court-appointed lawyers who lacked state-mandated qualifications, The Marshall Project - Cleveland found.

Ohio has a system to repay counties for private attorneys to represent people who can’t afford one. However, that taxpayer money comes with strings: Attorneys must keep up with legal education training and, in some cases, have trial experience.

The state added special qualifications for juvenile cases 15 years ago to ensure that defense lawyers have training in how juvenile law is different and the best ways to communicate with child clients.

“This isn’t just mini-adult court,” said Leah Winsberg, who long worked as an attorney with the Children’s Law Center, a nonprofit that provides legal services to children and advocates for policy reform. “Lawyers don’t just know stuff because they are lawyers. That is why we need ongoing training.”

Why do attorney qualifications matter?

Court-provided defense attorneys need to be as capable as the prosecutors they face, said Gayl Branum Carr, the immediate past president of the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges.

“Our justice system is based on a level playing field, so we have a check-and-balance system,” the retired judge from Virginia said. “It's even more important when you're talking about a child who's charged with a delinquent act.”

In the past two years, community groups and advocates have questioned the juvenile court’s practice of hand-picking attorneys for kids. That’s because more children from Cuyahoga County have their cases transferred to adult court through a legal process called a bindover.

The groups are pushing for more transparency and accountability in decisions made in these cases. Earlier this year a Marshall Project – Cleveland investigation found that juvenile court judges, magistrates or their staff gave two-thirds of delinquency case assignments for private counsel to 10 attorneys in the year ending October 2023. The court’s assignment system violated state rules that say judges should equitably distribute cases and not directly influence the selection of attorneys.

Some attorneys made nearly $300,000 a year handling defense and child abuse cases. Others wondered why they were offered no assignments.

Court says reimbursement rules led to fewer attorneys

County juvenile court officials say the state’s reimbursement system doesn’t guarantee that kids get experienced lawyers. The additional requirements the state set — no matter how well-intentioned — have created a disincentive for attorneys to take youth defense cases, they said.

“The current system also expects us to be the police of attorney ‘qualifications,’” Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Administrator Timothy McDevitt said in an email.

Despite those frustrations, court officials have started to make changes, including:

- Having attorneys provide proof of their qualifications.

- Creating a staff position to track case assignments to private attorneys.

- Increasing cases where county public defenders represent kids accused of crimes    by more than 40% since 2022.

Children and families frustrated with private attorneys

The Marshall Project - Cleveland spoke to more than a dozen young people, now all adults, and their parents about their experiences with court-appointed lawyers. They described rushed attorneys who didn’t explain key defense options — including how they could fight to keep their cases out of adult court. Others felt that their attorneys didn’t really fight for them.

Demarion Harris had no idea how the court picked attorneys or that the attorneys sometimes lacked the required training. Harris will be 26 when he’s up for parole in 2030. The court assigned him one of the juvenile court’s busiest attorneys. Harris said the attorney told him to forgo key hearings in his felonious assault case. He later pleaded guilty in adult court.

“I didn’t really understand what was really going on. He told me, ‘You’re getting bound over to the adult court system,’” Harris said. “He didn’t break down all the motions I had to go through. He didn’t tell me none of that.”

Tekisha Cunningham’s son, Jaylan, was transferred to adult court, where he pleaded guilty last year to involuntary manslaughter and other charges. She said the family often heard little to nothing from private attorneys.

“You feel helpless,” Cunningham said. “And as a parent, that's the one feeling you don't want to feel.”

What to know about the attorney qualification system

Until this year, the juvenile court operated on an honor system where attorneys told the court which cases they were qualified to handle and get paid for. Unlike other large juvenile courts in Ohio, Cuyahoga County didn’t check the qualifications.

To qualify for a court appointment to represent kids in felony-level cases, attorneys need 12 hours of study in criminal law and procedure in the two years before the assignment. At least half of those hours must be on juvenile delinquency topics.

The Marshall Project - Cleveland reviewed Ohio Supreme Court records that track those education hours for 46 local attorneys who took the most felony-level cases.

We found that:

- Defense counsel fell short on educational qualifications in 79% of felony-level
assignments to private lawyers.

- The state reimbursed Cuyahoga County hundreds of thousands of dollars for    assignments to attorneys who lacked qualifications. Some of the reimbursement covered work on other cases for the same clients.

- In picking private lawyers, Administrative Judge Thomas O’Malley assigned private attorneys who turned out to lack the training requirements in 87% of felony cases and 96% of bindover cases — percentages higher than any other judge.

- Four private attorneys — Edward Borkowski, William Beck, Paul Daher and Christopher Lenahan — accounted for nearly half of all felony case assignments to attorneys who lacked qualifications for reimbursement.

Borkowski did not provide the court with proof he had experience taking more than one case to trial in adult court, according to the court’s review. He needed two criminal jury trials to take first- or second-degree felony cases and three for murder cases. Borkowski did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Attorneys call rules confusing, unclear

Attorneys, for the most part, said they did their best to meet the qualifications. They also said the state rules were not clear. It’s local officials who decide which courses count and whether attorneys have trial experience.

Attorneys can contact the state for advice on counting courses or ask for exemptions from the training and trial experience requirements. No attorney reviewed by The Marshall Project – Cleveland made either request in recent years, the state said.

Attorney Ian Friedman, who represents lawyers Beck, Daher and Lenahan, said each of the attorneys, who have practiced in juvenile court for decades, believed that the classes they took satisfied the eligibility criteria in place.

“The only story to be told of these attorneys would be one of great skill and understanding in rendering outstanding legal assistance to their clients,” Friedman said. “If there are any concerns about the services afforded, the analysis should be aimed elsewhere because these attorneys have only operated at the highest levels within a Justice system that was in place long before they began practicing.”

There appears to be a recent uptick in the number of attorneys meeting the legal education requirements. Some, including Beck, Daher and Lenahan, are no longer applying to take the most serious cases, including bindovers for murder or aggravated robbery. Others, like Borkowski, are no longer eligible after the court found that they lacked jury trial experience.

The court said it’s struggling to find enough private attorneys to fill case assignments.

What do we know about case outcomes?

What’s not clear is whether, overall, these state qualifications affect the outcomes for children facing crimes. That type of information for juvenile cases isn’t readily available.

The juvenile court provided information on more than 450 cases where prosecutors wanted to transfer a child’s case to adult court.

The records show that young people with court-appointed private attorneys, regardless of whether they met the state qualifications, had their cases moved to adult court more often than children represented by county-employed public defenders.