Abstention order struck down Ohio Supreme Court reverses , remands case of Lorain man ordered not to father children as a condition of probation

The Ohio Supreme Court struck down a Lorain County judge's order that barred a Lorain man from fathering any more children while on probation for failure to pay back child support. Friday's decision came almost five years after Probate Judge James Walther ordered London Chapman to take "reasonable efforts" to avoid having any more children as a condition of his probation in a felony child support case. The case had made its way through the lower courts several times, before being taken up by the Ohio Supreme Court in January. Chapman's lawyer, Giovanna Scaletta-Bremke, praised the decision. She said she'd contacted Chapman while he was at work and told him the news. "I think it will have a good effect, and not just on nonsupport cases, but on cases in general that there is a community control sanction," she said. "It's gone to the 9th District Court of Appeals twice, they've been resentenced twice with Judge Walther and this will be the third time coming up that we go before Judge Walther." When Walther originally ordered Chapman to make the effort to avoid having more children, Chapman owed more than $200,000 in back child support to 11 of his 13 dependents. The Supreme Court's majority opinion noted that the criminality of Chapman's unpaid support was separate from the number of children he has. Fathering more children would increase that financial burden, the decision said, and the laws surrounding his support payments stay the same whether he has "seven children, or 77." "As long as the crime of nonsupport depends on an offender's ability to pay, a prohibition requiring Chapman to 'make reasonable measures' to avoid fathering another child during his term of community control is not," the majority opinion states. Walther said he was disappointed with the Supreme Court's decision. "I've always tried to impose commonsense rules for probationers to help them be successful," he said. "If I can help them get a job, they pay their child support, they stay out of trouble, everybody wins — moms, dads, kids, the whole community. … I simply ask them to take pride in and support their children that they already had before creating more children that they can't possibly support — we know that parents that support their children are way more likely to have positive relationships with those children." He said the condition worked in other cases, as lawyers would inform their clients of the potential limitation, motivating those clients to get jobs and make support payments. Walther has handled nonsupport cases in the county for the past 12 years, but as other dockets such as guardianship and mental illness cases have grown, he will be transferring those to another county judge early next year. Justice Judith French was the lone dissenting justice, and noted the procreation condition targeted Chapman's criminal conduct. "It is difficult to imagine how fathering dependents that the law mandates Chapman to support does not have some relationship to the criminal act of failing to pay court-ordered support for his dependents," she wrote. The ruling is tied to another case from Lorain County. Lee Anderson, also of Lorain, was similarly barred from fathering children as a condition of his community control for unpaid child support. Scaletta-Bremke, who is also Anderson's lawyer, said she expected the Supreme Court to reverse and remand that case back to the trial court as well. Chapman and Taylor are not the first men in Lorain County ordered to avoid fathering children as part of a child support case. In 2013, Asim Taylor pleaded guilty of criminal nonsupport for failure to pay child support to the mother of his four children. At that time, Walther imposed probation that included the condition that Taylor make reasonable efforts to avoid fathering any more children during that time. Taylor's case was appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court in 2014, after Walther's ruling was upheld in the 9th District Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court declined to accept Taylor's case that same year. Taylor, of Elyria, was one of two people killed in a car crash Jan. 1, 2017. Contact Carissa Woytach at (440) 329-7245 or cwoytach@chroniclet.com.