Darlell OrrOhio Department of Rehab and Corrections
CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Ohio Supreme Court today will hear arguments about whether Cuyahoga County can prosecute a man in his 30s for a rape prosecutors say he committed when he was 13.
Since being charged in 2013 with a rape first reported 20 years ago, Darlell Orr’s case has been caught in a “legal limbo” of sorts over which court – juvenile or adult – should handle his case.
Or if it is fair for him to face charges at all.
How did the case start?
DNA evidence linked Darlell Orr to the 1993 rape of a 14-year-old girl. The victim reported the rape and evidence was collected at a Cleveland hospital. That evidence, a rape kit, wasn’t tested until 20 years later as part of a statewide initiative to process nearly 14,000 rape kits from around Ohio.
At the time authorities connected Orr to the crime, he was in the Cuyahoga County jail facing charges he murdered a man during a 2011 home invasion. Orr represented himself in that case and was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison.
A county judge in 2014 dismissed the rape case, saying that the adult court didn’t have the authority to hear the case of a defendant who was 13 in 1993 and that the juvenile court couldn’t hear the case because Orr is now in his 30s.
An appeals court agreed with the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Peter J. Corrigan’s decision and prosecutors asked the Ohio Supreme Court to hear the case.
What’s being argued?
Lawyers for Orr will argue that it would violate his constitutional rights for him to be tried in an adult court since he was 13 at the time the crime was committed and that under Ohio law at the time, cases of children that young could not be transferred to an adult court.
In 1997, the law changed prohibiting the juvenile court from hearing a case if a person accused of committing a crime as a juvenile is an adult over 21 when arrested for the crime. Instead, those cases would be prosecuted in the common pleas or adult court.
Orr’s attorney from the Cuyahoga County Public Defender’s office argues that law cannot be retroactively applied to his case. In addition, state public defenders and juvenile law advocate groups argue that penalties Orr would have faced in 1993 were designed for children in a civil court setting and the penalties he would face in adult court are far more severe, such as prison time.
Cuyahoga County prosecutors say the case should never have been dismissed and Orr was never in “legal limbo” as the appeals court contended. He has no constitutional right to be treated as a child, they argue. Having the case heard in an adult court doesn’t take away Orr’s rights but simply changes the venue in which it is heard, prosecutors will argue.
Prosecutors say they need the ability, in cases like this, to seek justice for victims of sexual assault or other crimes, like homicide.
It’s unclear how many cases statewide involving the testing of rape kits might involve suspects or defendants who were juveniles when the crime was reported.
A roller coaster
The victim in the case was disappointed when the case was initially dismissed. Now in her 30s, she told The Plain Dealer that the case had put her on an emotional roller coaster, reminding her of the lack of response from officials and adults in her life at the time and the struggles she endured after the rape. Orr was scary even a young age. She said she still carries scars on her body from where he burned her with boiling water during the attack.
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