From Rev. Ryan Wallace, Senior Pastor, Fairmount Presbyterian Church

Last Wednesday, October 8, more than two dozen GCC leaders gathered before dawn to embark on a 3-hour journey to Defiance, where the Ohio Supreme Court would be hearing a case in which GCC filed an amicus brief earlier this year–State of Ohio v. D.T.

I met D.T. for the first time almost three years ago–sitting across from one another at his grandparents’ dining room table. D.T. had been arrested in late 2021 and charged with more than 40 counts connected to a string of carjackings. He was 14 years old. By the time I met D.T., he had already been bound over by the juvenile court and had accepted a plea bargain in the court of common pleas. Facing up to 89.5 years in prison if he went to trial, D.T. agreed to a sentence of 18-24 years in adult prison. When we met, he was on house arrest, awaiting his sentencing hearing. When that day came, Pastor Napoleon Harris (Pastor of Antioch Baptist Church) and I flanked his mother in the courtroom as D.T. received a 21 year sentence without parole. 

We continued to walk with D.T. and his family, making sure they had an attorney from the Ohio Public Defender’s Office to file an appeal. About 15 months later, D.T. won in the Eighth District Court of Appeals–the court’s opinion validating the legal errors and injustices in his juvenile hearings in Cuyahoga County. County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley appealed this decision to the Ohio Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case, which is why we found ourselves in Defiance last Wednesday.

County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley’s argument to the Supreme Court was simple: children who are bound over and accept a plea bargain do not have a right to an appeal. The argument is a cunning attempt to reinterpret the letter of the law in order to deny justice. 

Two chapters of the Ohio revised code lay out the laws governing the juvenile courts of Ohio. And within those chapters, there are 261 individual sections, each one addressing a very specific aspect of juvenile justice. But the very first section–2152.01 “Purpose of juvenile dispositions”–reads: 

“The overriding purposes for dispositions under this chapter are to provide for the care, protection, and mental and physical development of children…to protect the public interest and safety, hold the offender accountable for the offender’s actions, restore the victim, and rehabilitate the offender…Dispositions under this chapter shall be reasonably calculated to achieve the overriding purposes set forth in this section.”

In other words, don’t miss the forest for the trees. Every single decision in our juvenile justice system must come back to the overriding purposes of the law; what we might call: the “spirit” of the law. Instead of following the spirit of the law, Prosecutor O’Malley is seeking a legal loophole that would strip D.T. and the children of Ohio of their right to appeal.

This legal reminder is nearly identical to the one Jesus offers to the interpreters of the law in chapter 23 of the Gospel of Matthew where he says:

“Woe to you, legal experts…[who are] hypocrites! For you devour the oppressed…Woe to you…For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others.”

What Jesus is really saying is this: “Don’t become so fixated on the terminology and technicalities of the of sub-sections and the sub-sub-sections of the law that you forget why the law exists in the first place.”

And in his letter to the Galatians, the Apostle Paul writes: 

“All the Law has been fulfilled in a single statement: Love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour each other, be careful that you don’t get eaten up!”

We refuse to allow our children to be devoured by the prosecutor. Woe to you, Prosecutor O’Malley! For you argue a jurisdictional technicality and neglect the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and compassion! 

Instead, we dream of a world in which the law is fulfilled by the power of God’s love and mercy and justice. Until then, we will continue to stand with D.T. and the children of our community who deserve better. With faith and hope, we await the court’s decision.