Narrow focus of House Bill 3

Aisha’s Law, proposed Ohio House Bill 3, seeks to make it harder for repeat domestic abusers to hurt, maim and kill their former intimate partners. It packs a deep emotional punch in Greater Cleveland. Understandably.

Family and friends of the late Aisha Fraser, a beloved Shaker Heights teacher allegedly stabbed to death last year by her ex-husband, disgraced former Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Lance Mason, have provided powerful testimony in favor of the bill. It was introduced in May with primary sponsorship by state Rep. Janine Boyd of Cleveland Heights.

But there’s a problem. HB 3 goes way too far. A series of ill-considered provisions has drawn the ire of a range of groups that normally would champion reform. And Boyd told cleveland.com reporter Laura Hancock last month that the bill remains a work in progress with more changes coming.

That’s counterproductive. Even critics of other parts of the bill applaud the core reform that our editorial board previously had said should be at the heart of Aisha’s Law -“11 questions” as part of an evidence-based “lethality assessment screening tool” that courts can use to better assess the risks posed by an abuser. The Ohio Judicial Conference “strongly supports” this provision, according to Clermont County Domestic Relations Judge Kathleen M. Rodenberg, who chairs the Ohio Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Domestic Violence.

Boyd should make changes -- by narrowing the bill’s focus.

It’s way too broad now. For instance, HB 3 as introduced would widen Ohio’s death penalty crimes to include repeat domestic abusers, even if the first offense was a misdemeanor. It would, according to critics, improperly rewrite rules of evidence, a task that the Ohio Constitution reserves for the state Supreme Court. It would allow, as a matter of law, certain types of hearsay evidence to be offered without the ability to cross-examine the witness. That’s drawn the opposition of Chief Cuyahoga County Public Defender Mark A. Stanton, who cited the U.S. Constitution’s Sixth Amendment right of confrontation in his testimony.

HB 3 also would add potentially crushing costs to all court systems in the state by requiring that a judge or magistrate be available 24/7 to issue protection orders.

No one wants another beautiful, caring woman, another devoted, long-suffering mother like Aisha Fraser to be killed or to suffer grievous bodily harm and have her children permanently scarred by witnessing that abuse. No rational judge, prosecutor or police officer wants that scenario to repeat. Yet it does, over and over again.

Last month, four people were horrifically murdered in Cleveland’s Slavic Village neighborhood, including two children ages 2 and 6, and their 25-year-old mother Takeyra Collins. Arrested was Collins’ estranged intimate partner -- a man who’d been accused five and a half years previously of attacking her in a case that was never resolved, although it prompted a protection order to be issued against him.

But protection orders are just pieces of paper. Cleveland. com’s Kaylee Remington found 12 other fatal cases dating to 2010 in Greater Cleveland where women (all women) were strangled, shot, beaten or knifed to death by their estranged spouses and intimate partners, sometimes in front of their children.

Reform is sorely needed. But start with the 11 questions. Perfect that part of HB 3 -Rodenberg, for instance, testified the bill lacked a mechanism “for the sharing of any assessment results with a bond officer or the court.”

Narrow Aisha’s Law to make it work sooner rather than later, to make a real difference for others in Ohio facing the threat of serious physical harm from a domestic abuser.

Read the editorial from the Cleveland Plain Dealer at bit. ly/2OGKlrZ