By Mark Puente for The Marshall Project.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Ohio News Connection reporting for the Marshall Project-Public News Service Collaboration

Cuyahoga County Domestic Relations Judge Leslie Ann Celebrezze violated court rules when she steered a contentious but lucrative divorce case involving a longtime friend to her own docket, the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled.

The ruling bars Celebrezze from overseeing the case, in which she has faced numerous bias allegations from attorneys for Jason Jardine, a Strongsville businessman who is getting divorced. The allegations raised questions about the friendship between Celebrezze and receiver Mark Dottore.

Dottore is the judge’s lifelong family friend, who has been paid more than $500,000 in fees since 2017 for working as a court-appointed receiver in divorce cases in Celebrezze’s courtroom.

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy’s decision permanently removes Celebrezze from the divorce case of Jardine. It does not yet affect Dottore’s assignment as receiver.

Kennedy didn’t consider Jardine’s bias allegations. Instead, the judge found the point moot because Celebrezze violated court policy when she unilaterally moved Jardine’s case to her docket after another judge recused herself.

Kennedy disqualified Celebrezze to avoid an appearance of impropriety, the ruling states.

“Judge Celebrezze was not randomly assigned to Jardine’s case. The failure to randomly assign the case was in violation of the local rules,” Kennedy wrote in her ruling released Friday.

“Therefore, to allay any concerns about the integrity of the underlying case, and to ensure to the parties and the public the unquestioned neutrality of an impartial judge, Judge Celebrezze is disqualified.”

Celebrezze declined to comment. The Jardine case, according to the court’s online docket, has been reassigned to Judge Diane Palos, who joined the court in 2009.

In a written response to the allegations seeking her removal, Celebrezze said that it was her practice to reassign complex and contentious cases to herself. Kennedy balked at the claim.

“Each judge of that court is presumed competent to handle any assigned case, even complex and contentious matters,” Kennedy wrote.

“Regardless of Judge Celebrezze’ s intention, the purpose of randomly reassigning cases after one judge recuses is defeated when the administrative judge handpicks a case to keep for herself.”

Kennedy also ruled that Judge Tonya Jones violated local rules when she recused herself from Jardine’s case in August 2022 and reassigned the case to Celebrezze.

Jones stepped aside because “her former staff attorney left employment with the court and accepted employment with” Jardine’s attorney, the court previously said.

“Judge Jones was without authority to issue an order recusing from the case and reassigning the matter to Judge Celebrezze,” Kennedy wrote.

Jones also declined to comment.

Meanwhile, the controversy around Celebrezze and Dottore has widened.

Georgeanna Semary, Celebrezze’s judicial assistant since 2009, contends she was transferred out of the judge’s office in April and forced to take a $20,000 pay cut after she allowed The Marshall Project - Cleveland to review public records involving Dottore or his company, court records show.

Semary provided a reporter with copies of billing invoices from Dottore’s firm contained in the public file.

After the demotion and pay cut, Semary retained the Chandra Law Firm, which specializes in civil rights cases. In anticipation of a lawsuit, Chandra Law attorneys earlier this month requested copies of court policies, emails, pay records and other documents to better understand why Semary was demoted after The Marshall Project - Cleveland published a story about Celebrezze.

“This should also include any documents that reflect why Ms. Semary’s job was changed on or about the day that The Marshall Project published an article about Judge Celebrezze,” attorney Subodh Chandra wrote in a request to the court

“If Ms. Semary did something wrong that merited adverse actions against her, we expect to receive the records that document that.”

Earlier this summer, The Marshall Project - Cleveland reported that the volume of work Celebrezze gave to Dottore raises questions over whether the judge usurped case assignment policy to drive lucrative cases to her friend.

The Marshall Project - Cleveland noted that the court’s rules state: “When it is necessary for a case already assigned to a judge to be reassigned due to a recusal, the administrative judge will reassign a judge, at random, and record the reassignment on the docket.”

Additionally, three of the court’s other judges each told The Marshall Project - Cleveland that they have never seen the need to appoint receivers in divorce cases.

In complex divorce cases, judges can appoint receivers — often charging couples thousands of dollars — to act as neutral parties to control marital property, including real estate, cash and businesses. Receivers have the sole authority to manage the businesses and assets at their discretion throughout the litigation.

Kennedy temporarily removed Celebrezze from the Jardine divorce case on May 18 after Jardine’s attorneys filed an affidavit of disqualification to remove her from the case.

Celebrezze has known Mark Dottore most of her life. Dottore has served as a receiver on cases in her courtroom, as well as many other area judges, on numerous occasions. He also served as campaign treasurer when she ran successfully for her judgeship in 2008. Her campaign headquarters is listed under his business address.

Government watchdogs have suggested that the close relationship raises questions about transparency in Celebrezze’s courtroom and whether she rules without bias in cases involving Dottore and his company.

Kennedy’s ruling marks at least the second time since 2009 that Celebrezze has been removed from a divorce case in which Dottore was assigned as receiver.

Celebrezze made headlines that year after the Ohio Supreme Court ordered her removal from a divorce case involving Marc Strauss, a wealthy real estate developer. Dottore was also the receiver in the case and cited as a reason to disqualify Celebrezze, The Plain Dealer reported in May 2009.


Mark Puente wrote this article for The Marshall Project.

This collaboration is produced in association with Media in the Public Interest and funded in part by the George Gund Foundation.


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By Weihua Li and Jamiles Lartey for The Marshall Project.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for Illinois News Connection reporting for the Marshall Project-Public News Service Collaboration

Two key crime reports released by the Justice Department this fall reveal a changing crime landscape, even when they diverge on year-over-year trends. Property crime rose in significant ways for the first time in years. Violent crime against young people doubled. As usual, most crimes go unreported. And as a major election season looms in 2024, the deviation between the reports on recent trends in violent crime could be read selectively to score political points.

The FBI’s crime reporting program and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ crime victimization survey are generally seen as the Justice Department’s two major pillars of national crime statistics. While the FBI tries to collect crime data directly from more than 18,000 police agencies through its Uniform Crime Reporting program, the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) interviews 150,000 families across the country. The NCVS asks questions that capture crimes that were not reported to police as well as ones that were, which are then weighted in order to estimate crime victimization for more than 120 million U.S. households.

Federal reports show similar long-term trends in violent crime, but diverge significantly on year-over-year changes

Both reports show a return to pre-pandemic levels of violent crime since the COVID-19 pandemic broke out three years prior, and a similar pattern: The violent crime rate exhibited significant fluctuations during the pandemic, but by 2022, it had returned to pre-pandemic levels.

During the pandemic, the country saw a significant uptick in homicides, shootings and aggravated assaults, which likely contributed to the increase seen in data reported by law enforcement. At the same time, violent crime victimizations — which included less acute forms of violent crime, such as assaults without weapons that did not lead to serious injuries — dipped. These violent crime victimizations mostly went unreported.

Murders are a good measurement for the most serious violent crimes, partially because they are almost always reported to police. According to the FBI’s crime statistics, the number of murders dropped by 6.1% from 2021 to 2022, but is still higher than where it was prior to the pandemic.

For some observers, the jump in serious violent crime was always bound to stabilize, as the shock from the early pandemic wore off. “Violent crime rates had been trending down for at least a decade. And when the pandemic hit, unsurprisingly, with this once-in-a-century event, you saw things shift,” said Kim Foxx, state’s attorney for Cook County, Illinois. “As we are coming out of the pandemic, the fact that we are now seeing those numbers trend downward again is not surprising to me.”

Despite the long-term trends, the two reports differ more than ever before on the year-over-year change in violent crime.

Since the methodologies for these two reports are different, it’s not unusual for them to show different trends on a particular year, said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminology professor at the University of Missouri, who recently wrote about this divergence for the Council on Criminal Justice. Over the past 30 years, these two reports’ difference in year-over-year violence trends has never been as big as it was last year.

In 2021, the FBI changed how it collects data from police departments, and as a result, that year’s crime data missed nearly 40% of police agencies. Bureau analysts estimated the missing data with statistical modeling, but the change led to the most incomplete picture of national crime since the FBI began collecting data in the 1930s, which created confusion on how crime trends changed. Last year, the FBI reversed the change and revived the previously-retired data collection system. They also gave agencies that didn’t submit data for 2021 a chance to submit their data retrospectively. Nearly 2,500 agencies took the FBI’s offer and submitted crime data through the old system for 2022, but it’s unclear how many did for 2021.

Experts said the lingering effect of that transition could be why the 2021-2022 trend is unreliable: If the 2021 crime data remains incomplete, it is difficult to compare it with the 2022 data.

These data gaps and disagreements create more space for politicians to spin unsubstantiated, murky narratives. When Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced his run for president, for example, he touted that Florida’s crime rate has reached a record-low under his administration. But he failed to mention that he relied on a crime rate estimation that was missing data from about half of the state’s law enforcement agencies, which policed 40% of the state’s population.

The FBI said it cannot address the difference between its crime data and the BJS’ victimization survey because it “cannot comment on another agency's report.”

In an interview, BJS statisticians said there’s no single factor that can neatly explain the divergence — the victimization survey and police statistics are designed to complement each other, and often reflect different aspects of criminal justice and victim’s issues.

“It would be nice to know what's happening with violent crime rates,” said Richard Rosenfeld. “But having two contrasting reports both coming out of the Justice Department enables politicians, or anyone else who has a horse in the race, to just cherry-pick the estimate that fits best with their [priorities] and ignore the other.”

Property crime went up in 2022

While the Justice Department’s two reports diverged on recent violent crime trends, both showed an uptick in property crime from 2021 to 2022: The FBI’s crime data showed a 7.1% increase in property crime, while the victimization survey showed a 14.5% jump.

In both reports, a sharp increase in motor vehicle theft and larceny were the main drivers for the increase in property crime. The former, criminologists said, can be partially attributed to the “Kia Boyz,” whose videos on how to steal Hyundai and Kia vehicles went viral on social media platforms.

In Chicago, the number of stolen Kia and Hyundais jumped 35 times over a couple of months — from 45 cars stolen in May 2022 to more than 1,400 cars stolen that October, according to data compiled by Vice. Data from other major cities, like Los Angeles, Denver and Milwaukee, showed similar trends.

Relentless inflation can also lead to more property crimes like theft and larceny, Rosenfeld said. Last summer, the inflation rate reached 9.1% — the highest in decades — which led many people to trade down on where they shop, and some traded down to purchasing stolen goods. While the inflation rate has since dropped, the 2022 crime data doesn’t reflect its effect yet.

One undeniable trend: Violent crimes against young people doubled

Another trend that both Justice Department reports show is that young people experienced more violence in 2022.

The FBI’s crime data shows that while fatal and non-fatal gun violence against adults declined in 2022, both increased by more than 10% for young people who are under the age of 18. Similarly, the crime victimization survey shows that the violent victimization rate for people between the ages of 12 and 17 doubled last year — from 13 to 27 violent crimes per 1,000 youth, representing the age group that saw the biggest increase in violent victimization.

Researchers have theories on why violence against young people jumped, but caution that little is definitive. Kim Smith, the Director of Programs at the University of Chicago Crime Lab, points to school enrollment as a factor that might be one piece of the puzzle. Nationwide, school enrollment rates fell during the pandemic and are still yet to recover. The Crime Lab has found that in Chicago, a startling 90% of youth shooting victims were not active or enrolled at school at the time they were shot. “Education is the most protective factor against future violence involvement,” Smith said.

Other analysts have pointed to the increase in gun purchases since the beginning of the pandemic, and the sense of danger that many young people feel in their neighborhoods. “We had an influx of guns during the COVID shutdown, and an enormous amount of guns that entered the country and ended up on the streets,” said Jamila Hodge, executive director of the national violence prevention group Equal Justice USA. “That influx is reflected in the numbers of rising violence against young people — it's access to guns.”

Still, most crimes are not reported to the police

While the FBI continues trying to improve the national crime statistics, most property and violent crimes are not reported to the police, the victimization survey shows.

The survey asks victims if they reported crimes they experienced to the police. About 41% of violent crime victims said they reported the incident to the police. But the actual number of violent crimes police recorded is much lower.

While the BJS estimated more than 6 million violent crime victimizations, and estimated more than 2 million of those incidents were reported to the police, the FBI’s crime statistics only recorded 1.2 million incidents. In some incidents, a reported crime is not recorded by the police.


Weihua Li and Jamiles Lartey wrote this article for The Marshall Project.




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An Alabama bookstore is working to make sure people in prison have access to books.

The Burdock Book Collective in Birmingham is on a mission to bridge connections and shatter stereotypes within the prison system.

Teaming up with the Alabama Books to Prison Project, they are providing books and pen pals to help people combat the isolation of prison life and expand their access to educational resources.

For collective co-founder Katie Willis - who is also a volunteer with the project - the act of sending books fosters connections and helps bring humanity to people serving time.

"Also the relationships that are built by sending books to people - and feeling cared for, feeling connected to somebody else," said Willis. "Because a lot of the folks that we are in contact with, they have no one else in the world. And so, it's been really meaningful for them in that way."

Since joining the books to prison program, she said the bookstore has delivered 400 books to about 200 recipients in recent years. According to data from the Prison Policy Initiative, about 43,000 people are incarcerated in Alabama.

Meagan Lyle, also a co-founder of collective and a volunteer with the project, explains that getting the books isn't always a straightforward process.

Someone at the prison - perhaps the warden or another designated person - determines which titles are allowed, so restrictions vary depending on the facility.

Lyle said the lack of clear-cut rules can make it difficult for those behind bars to get some of the reading material they seek.

"Sometimes, prisons have just been completely rejecting books from us," said Lyle. "So, there are a few prisons - including Tutwiler and the Montgomery Women's Facility - that haven't accepted books. And they cite the reasons are, like, contraband."

Willis and Lyle said they're working to forge connections with jails and prisons statewide to grow their efforts.

And they firmly believe the simple gesture of providing reading materials can bring about change, even in a system plagued by low parole rates and overcrowding.

Lyle said she hopes this work can also serve as a way to initiate discussions on restorative justice.

"I think you can come to this project thinking, 'Oh yeah, anybody deserves a book,'" said Lyle. "But you may not totally recognize the humanity in people that are incarcerated until you start building relationships with them. I hope that is something that's coming out of this, for folks on the outside."

According to the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning, there can be significant negative economic and social impacts when incarcerated people don't have access to education, that can affect them after their release.




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A Mississippi-based organization is providing free books to incarcerated individuals to promote literacy and pave the way for prison reform.

Prison book programs have been distributing free books to inmates in the United States since the early 1970s.

Miranda Vaughn, program assistant for the nonprofit Big House Books, said they have been sending books to incarcerated individuals throughout the state since 2014. She explained they collect book donations from the community and supply them to incarcerated individuals upon request. Inmates can request specific titles, authors or literary genres through letters.

"Every person who writes to us gets three books, regardless of whether they ask for 20 or they asked for one," Vaughn noted. "We just send them all three books. They have to be paperback only, and we always ask that they're in good condition. Any time we can send them new books, obviously, we try to do that as well."

Vaughn emphasized they operate mainly on the generosity of individual donors and volunteers. While the organization sometimes receives small grants, its primary source of funding is individual contributions, typically ranging from $5 to $20 per month.

Vaughn added they have not run into any issues so far with the book bans in Mississippi prisons, but some city and county jails throughout the state are a little stricter about what they will accept.

"We are written into the Department of Corrections policy as a book vendor. They have to accept our books," Vaughn stressed. "But some of the local jails and stuff that aren't really under that jurisdiction can pretty much have whatever restrictions they want, and we really can't do anything about it."

Vaughn said this GivingTuesday, they are asking the public to donate more books to help them send 1,000 packages to incarcerated Mississippians. They have a financial goal of $5,000 and she added each package contains three books to educate and transform an incarcerated person in Mississippi.


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