Judge releases T.J. Lane's records: Accused shooter had prior assault charge

Geauga County Juvenile/Probate Court Judge Tim Gren­dell issued a rul­ing Wednes­day mak­ing accused Chardon school shooter T.J. Lane’s delin­quency records avail­able to the news media.

Lane is accused of open­ing fire on five stu­dents in Monday's shoot­ing at Chardon High School. Three of the stu­dents were killed and two other were injured.

Accord­ing to the doc­u­ments, Lane was charged with assault in Decem­ber 2009 for punch­ing another boy in the face and putting him in a choke hold.

Lane even­tu­ally pleaded true, the juve­nile equiv­a­lent of guilty, to a reduced charge of dis­or­derly conduct.

He was ordered to pay court costs and com­plete 24 hours of com­mu­nity service.

In Sep­tem­ber 2011, Lane was charged with fail­ure to con­trol a motor vehi­cle. He suc­cess­fully com­pleted a juve­nile dri­ving class, paid a fine and had his license sus­pended for 75 days.

Assis­tant Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney Nick Burl­ing argued mak­ing the records pub­lic could attach a stigma to the sus­pect, affect­ing Lane’s changes to reha­bil­i­tate, if he is ulti­mately found guilty.

How­ever, defense attor­ney Robert Fari­nacci with­drew his pre­vi­ous objec­tion to mak­ing the delin­quency records pub­lic. Fari­nacci said with so much infor­ma­tion — and mis­in­for­ma­tion — already out, the doc­u­ments should set the record straight. The judge agreed.

“This may address some rumors the court has heard out and about on the streets,” Gren­dell said.

Addi­tion­ally, Gren­dell ruled that because of the promi­nence of the case, the media is per­mit­ted to take pho­tos of Lane at his next court appear­ance Tues­day afternoon.

Imme­di­ately before that hear­ing, the court will hold a short ses­sion to deter­mine whether to make pub­lic any Job and Fam­ily Ser­vices cases per­tain­ing to Lane.

Those cases involve any his­tory of abuse, neglect or other domes­tic issues and are sep­a­rate from delin­quency cases.

“At the end of the day, none of us want to cre­ate an envi­ron­ment that could affect the fair­ness of the pro­ceed­ings on this mat­ter in this court,” Gren­dell said.

The judge is also expected to rule on the poten­tial release of court records for the five shoot­ing vic­tims at the same Tues­day hearing.

Posted by Terra Carlson on Mar 1 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.