Jessika Gualtieri, Attorney at Law

02/06/2018

We are responsible for helping our kids be comfortable with people of different colors/backgrounds. We have to teach them to resist the prevalent racism/classism around us.

Infographic by early childhood educator Jarrod Fischer Green. (Thanks, Shannon!)

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DUpAPjRWkAAWfYb.jpg

06/12/2017

05/25/2017

This really disrupts the finality we expect from Supreme Court decisions and makes things unclear for practitioners in Juvenile Court and, more importantly, our clients.

The constitutional rights of older juveniles charged with certain serious crimes are not violated when they are automatically sent to trial in adult court, the Ohio Supreme Court ruled today.

02/03/2016

It can be tough to keep this perspective, but that doesn't make it any less true.

The Cook County public defender says her clients are victims of a broken system—one that must be fixed from the ground up.

10/05/2015

This is an interesting and thoughtful piece about a viable approach to re-integrating s*x offenders after they serve their time.

In June of 1994, a convicted child molester named Charlie Taylor moved into a small apartment in downtown Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, across the street from a community center. He had no family. He had no parole officer. At the time, s*x offenders deemed too dangerous to be let out of prison early we…

09/14/2015

We see this as true all around us. It is kinda nuts. But Dostoyevsky observed in the Brothers Karamozov that people do not like to allow for others' suffering. We just prefer not to be confronted with it, and if confronted like to discredit it.

05/13/2015

This is such a duh move IMHO.

A major change in Ohio capital punishment policy by excluding “serious mentally ill” offenders from ex*****on is expected to be introduced Tuesday in the Ohio Senate. Sens. Bill Seitz, R-Cincinnati, and Sandra Williams, D-Cleveland, have been working on legislation stemming from recommendations made…

02/27/2015

Sometimes when we are guardian ad litem we are choosing between bad options for kids that all inflict trauma- where home is traumatic and foster care transition is very traumatic. We need to remember the very long term impacts of the court's interventions for kids. We must minimize the trauma!

Childhood trauma isn’t something you just get over as you grow up. Pediatrician Nadine Burke Harris explains that the repeated stress of abuse, neglect and parents struggling with mental health or substance abuse issues has real, tangible effects on the development of the brain. This unfolds across…

01/20/2015

This article is great. It gives you a view into some of the intensity that is unique to representing delinquent kids.

Read an excerpt from Bryan Stevenson's powerful new book, 'Just Mercy.'

01/14/2015

A great quote from this article:

"...a young public defender suggested that her colleagues across the country begin to file pleadings titled, 'Motion to be Given the Same Treatment and Protections as White Police Officers.'"

Public defenders know that the trouble with our criminal-justice system extends far beyond abusive policing.