Franklin County court to add three advocates
Cases soar for those who help witnesses, victims
Navigating Franklin County Common Pleas Court can be traumatizing and confusing for victims, family members of victims and witnesses — people impacted by some of the most egregious crimes like murder or rape.
Victim witness advocates with the Franklin County Prosecutor’s Office help people along the long road to a possible conviction and sentence.
They’re the ones passing a tissue box to crying relatives during a trial, answering a victim’s questions about the legal process, helping a victim get counseling or reading aloud a victim impact statement at sentencing when the mother of a slain child is sobbing too hard to talk.
Franklin County has long needed more advocates, according to Joelle Nielsen, director of the Victim Witness Assistance Unit.
The seven advocates handling cases in the court’s general division are juggling nearly 200 cases each on average, an untenable number, according to Nielsen.
Their caseloads have grown sharply because the number of homicide cases has ballooned in Franklin County in recent years. And a new Ohio law making strangulation a felony means there will be even more cases coming advocates’ way soon.
To make sure advocates have more manageable caseloads, enabling them to spend more time on victims, their families and witnesses in each case, Franklin County Prosecutor Gary Tyack’s office is hiring three more advocates with about $200,000 the Franklin County Board of Commissioners recently approved.
“Our victim advocates are some of the most significant public representatives of (the prosecutor’s) office. They are, typically, the first contact between our office and victims of violent crime and/ or their families,” Nielson told the county commissioners at their recent meeting where they approved the funding to hire the advocates.
Franklin County Assistant Prosecutor Daniel Meyer, director of the Special Victims Unit, said victim witness advocates are a huge help to prosecutors and they are overworked.
“If we don’t have trust, then people are, generally speaking, less likely to cooperate with us. We can’t prosecute crimes if we don’t have cooperation from victims and witnesses,” Meyer said.
Advocates are not assigned to every felony case in Franklin County. They handle murder, manslaughter and any case where somebody died; every Special Victims Unit case, including cases of sexual assault, child pornography or human trafficking; domestic violence cases; and cases involving elder abuse.
Nielsen said the advocates’ caseloads
have increased by 73% in the past five years. In 2018, most advocates had between 100 and 110 cases. This year, each advocate has an average of 180 to 200 cases, according to Nielsen.
During the pandemic, Columbus, the largest city in Franklin County, broke its record for annual homicides in 2020 (175 people killed) and again in 2021 (205 killed) before annual homicides went down in 2022 with 140 killed. The pandemic also shut down the courts, delaying the resolution of cases and creating a logjam that over the last several months has broken open.
Laura Marsh, victim witness advocate coordinator, said the last eight months have been horrendous for the advocates with so many cases finally going forward and not enough staff.
Marsh described a recent week where she was covering a murder trial that was not assigned to her, a rape case that was not hers, a robbery case that was assigned to her and another murder case.
“I was just running wherever I could, doing whatever I could, but they were all at the same time,” Marsh said. “We can’t support (the families) correctly. We all want to do our jobs well, and we can’t do them well if we are completely overwhelmed.”
While appreciated, the addition of three more advocates may not be enough to dramatically bring down caseloads since cases involving non-fatal strangling, or choking, will soon be added to advocates’ plates, according to Marsh and Nielsen.
In January, Ohio became the last state to make strangling a felony, something prosecutors and those who work with domestic violence victims have long sought.
“It’s a huge deal for us to finally be able to pass that strangulation statute,” Meyer said. “Strangulation is a huge red flag.”
A 2008 study published in the Journal of Emergency Medicine found that victims of non-fatal strangling by their partner are 750% more likely to be killed later by that abuser.
Previously, strangling was charged as a misdemeanor in Ohio and City Attorney Zach Klein’s office estimated they charged 300 such cases last year, Meyer said. Now, strangulation cases will be handled by the county prosecutor’s office and get victim witness advocates assigned to them. jlaird@dispatch.com @Lairdwrites