A teen whose case was transferred from juvenile court could be convicted of crimes in adult court, even if the juvenile court had not initially found probable cause for the crimes, the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled today.

In a 5-2 decision, the Supreme Court reversed an Eighth District Appeals Court decision that vacated the convictions of a teenager who pleaded guilty in adult court to three charges.  The court of appeals had reversed the teenager’s conviction for one charge for which the juvenile court had determined there was no probable cause, and another charge that had not been presented to the juvenile court.

In upholding Tavonte Turner’s convictions following his guilty pleas in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, the Supreme Court majority overturned two of its 2022 decisions that the Eighth District relied on. The Court stated that State v. Smith was wrongly decided, and State v. Burns, to the extent it applied the holdings of Smith, was also wrong.

Writing for the Court majority, Justice Joseph T. Deters explained that the version of the law in effect at the time of Turner’s offenses in 2020 required that when a juvenile court transferred a case to adult court, it transferred the entire case, including all the acts charged in the juvenile complaint.

“The juvenile court’s jurisdiction over the cases abates, and the adult court has jurisdiction as though the case had been initiated there. The adult court’s jurisdiction extends not only to offenses charged in the juvenile complaint but also to any offense for which the grand jury issues an indictment,” he wrote.

Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy and Justices R. Patrick DeWine, Daniel R. Hawkins, and Megan E. Shanahan joined Justice Deters’ opinion.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Patrick F. Fischer noted that shortly after the Smith decision, state lawmakers changed the juvenile bindover law by creating R.C. 2152.022 to codify the Court’s holding in Smith. Further, the Court relied on Smith to decide four other juvenile cases between 2022 and 2024, he wrote, and the majority overturned Burns, a case that every justice on the Court at the time agreed with and no one asked the Court to overturn.

Justice Fischer wrote that he dissented in the Smith decision, and the General Assembly rejected that position. The Court must accept it, he stated.

In a separate dissenting opinion, Justice Jennifer Brunner wrote some justices on the Court “have been stubbornly pursuing” the reversal of Smith, but the General Assembly shut down the debate over how to interpret the juvenile bindover statute when it passed Senate Bill 288 in December 2022. She noted Turner and  “perhaps a handful” of other criminal defendants will be impacted by today’s decision and potentially face more charges than those whose cases were decided after Smith and the change in state law.

Juvenile Faced Additional Charges When Case Transferred
Tavonte Turner was 16 years old when he shot and killed Joseph Owens. Because of Turner’s age, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office filed a complaint in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court for committing five offenses that would be crimes if committed by an adult. He was charged with aggravated murder, murder, felonious assault, illegally possessing a weapon, and improperly handling a firearm.

Under R.C. 2152.12, Turner was subject to mandatory bindover to adult court if the juvenile court found there was probable cause that he had committed the offenses. After conducting a hearing, the juvenile judge found probable cause that Turner committed all the charged offenses except for illegally possessing a gun, which is known as having a weapon under a disability.

After the case was transferred to the general division of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, Turner was indicted on the same five counts he faced in juvenile court and seven new counts, including attempted murder. The attempted murder charge was related to a second victim, who Turner was seen firing at on a video captured by a residential security camera near the scene of Owens’ murder.

In adult court, Turner pleaded guilty to murder, with a three-year firearm specification, attempted murder, and illegally possessing a weapon. The remaining counts were dismissed. He received a 28-year-to-life prison sentence for the murder conviction. For the attempted  murder conviction, the trial judge imposed a seven-year sentence, which was to run consecutively to the murder sentence.  For the gun charge, Turner received a three-year sentence, which was to run concurrently with the other two sentences.  

Turner appealed his convictions to the Eighth District. In addition to challenging various aspects of his sentence, he argued the adult court lacked the authority to convict him of the attempted murder and gun possession charges. He maintained that those charges could not be imposed because the juvenile court had not first found probable cause that he committed those crimes.

Largely relying on the Smith decision, the Eighth District agreed to overturn the gun possession charge. It referenced the Burns decision to conclude that the attempted murder count could not be brought in adult court. In Burns, the Court ruled when a juvenile case is transferred to adult court, a juvenile may face a new charge “when the new charges are rooted in the acts that were the subject of the juvenile complaint but were not specifically named in the individual acts transferred.”

Even though the new attempted murder charge was based on Turner’s acts at the same time of the murder of Owens, the Eighth District found the attempted murder offense was distinct and “not rooted in the acts” that were the subject of the complaint prosecutors filed against Turner.

The Eighth District vacated the convictions for the two crimes, and the prosecutor appealed to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Analyzed Transfer Law at Time of Crime
Justice Deters explained that in certain cases, juveniles are subject to mandatory bindover to adult court, and Turner’s case qualified. Once the case is transferred, R.C. 2151.25(H) addresses how a case proceeds, he wrote.

The law grants the adult court jurisdiction to hear and determine the case in the same manner as if the case was originally initiated in adult court. It allows an adult court to accept a plea or enter a judgment of conviction against a minor for the offenses that were the basis for the juvenile complaint. The adult court can convict the minor for crimes of the same degree or a lesser degree, or “for the commission of another offense that is different from the offense charged.”

When Turner’s case was transferred to adult court, the grand jury indicted him for not only the crimes with which he had been charged in juvenile court but also additional charges. The trial court accepted his guilty pleas, and he was sentenced for those crimes, the opinion noted.

“The matter was resolved as prescribed by the statutory scheme,” the opinion stated.

The Court majority found the Eighth District relied on an erroneous conclusion in Smith. The Court had ruled in Smith that the law was interpreted to only allow the “acts” charged in juvenile court to be pursued in adult court. This meant acts for which no probable cause was found could not be transferred. However, Justice Deters explained, the law states the “case” should be transferred to adult court, which includes all charges regardless of whether the juvenile court found probable cause.  

Once the case was transferred to adult court, the case proceeds as if it had started there, the Court stated. That included any new charge on which Turner was indicted by a grand jury. The adult court had jurisdiction to accept Turner’s pleas for the new charge of attempted murder and the gun possession charge, the Court concluded.

The Court clarified that even with a change in the law regarding the definition of “case,” the adult court’s jurisdiction over another offense different from the offense charged remained the same.  The opinion noted that the phrase “rooted in,” which had been used to limit the adult court’s jurisdiction, was not in the statute.

The decision reinstated Turner’s convictions and remanded the case to the Eighth District to consider Turner’s remaining arguments about his conviction.

Decision Works An Injustice, Dissent Maintained
Justice Fischer wrote that even if the majority in Smith improperly interpreted the law at the time, the “General Assembly has since blessed that interpretation.” Smith was decided in February of 2022, he noted, so today’s decision will affect only a small number of cases, his dissent stated.

“This outcome is profoundly unfair for the few juvenile defendants who will be affected by the court’s judgment in this case simply because their cases are still in the appeals process compared to those defendants whose appeals were finalized between when Smith was decided in February 2022 and now,” he wrote.

He also wrote the “rooted in” requirement of the Burns decision is supported by the state laws governing the juvenile bindover process. The statutory language grants the adult court jurisdiction to determine “the case.” This limits the charges to the actions charged in juvenile court. Furthermore, under the statutory language, the juvenile can only be charged with a new offense if it was rooted in or arose from the same acts charged in the juvenile court, he stated.

Court Should Accept Juvenile Bindover Decision, Second Dissent Asserted
Justice Brunner wrote in her dissent that the policy-setting branch of state government, the General Assembly, has closed the books on interpreting the juvenile bindover statutes. The majority “refuses to humbly accept the outcome” and imposes its own application of the law that was rejected by the majority of the Court multiple times.

“The majority opinion’s arbitrary and unnecessary decision does not represent a fair administration of justice,” she wrote.

She would hold that the case was improvidently accepted for review, and the Eighth District’s decision should stand.

2023-1242. State v. Turner, Slip Opinion No. 2026-Ohio-1996.

View oral argument video of this case.

Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Office of Public Information for the general public and news media. Opinion summaries are not prepared for every opinion, but only for noteworthy cases. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official headnotes or syllabi of court opinions. The full text of this and other court opinions are available online.