On the morning of Monday, February 27, 2012, in the Geauga County seat of Chardon, Ohio, about 30 miles east of Cleveland, three teenagers were killed and three more were wounded in a matter of moments. The young man responsible, Thomas M. Lane III, known as T.J., was 17 years old. He was in custody within the hour, and he admitted what he had done to the first deputy who reached him. A year later, after a mandatory transfer from juvenile court, two competency findings and the withdrawal of an insanity plea, he pleaded guilty in the Geauga County Court of Common Pleas to three counts of aggravated murder, two counts of attempted aggravated murder and one count of felonious assault. On March 19, 2013, he was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life in prison without parole, with 37 more years on the remaining counts and specifications.
His age shaped every stage that followed. Ohio law required that a 17-year-old charged with aggravated murder be sent to adult court once probable cause was found, and it barred the death penalty for anyone under 18. The appeal that followed asked whether that mandatory transfer was constitutional and whether a sentence of life without parole could stand for a juvenile after the Supreme Court of the United States decided Miller v. Alabama in 2012. The Eleventh District Court of Appeals answered both questions against him in May 2014. Four months later he spent a few hours outside the walls of the state prison where he was held before he was caught, and a county prosecutor chose not to charge him for it. Later changes to Ohio's juvenile sentencing law, which opened parole review to most people sentenced for crimes committed before 18, were written so as to leave a case like his unchanged.
That winter Lane was enrolled at Lake Academy, an alternative program in Willoughby that let pupils work while they finished their studies. He described himself to detectives as an eleventh-grader taking twelfth-grade classes, on course to graduate early, with plans for college. His route each school day took him by bus into Chardon early in the morning, where he waited for a connecting bus to the Auburn Career Center in Concord Township and then on to Willoughby. On February 27 he was waiting in Chardon for that connection when the offenses took place.
Three young people died and three were wounded. One of the wounded was left paralyzed. A Geauga County sheriff's deputy on patrol was alerted, and within the hour he found Lane and took him into custody without resistance. After being advised of his rights, Lane told the deputy what he had done. The deputy drove him to the Geauga County Safety Center, the county's sheriff's headquarters and jail, where two sheriff's detectives questioned him on video.
The three who died were teenagers from the Chardon community: Daniel, remembered by those who knew him for a quick laugh and a sharp wit, Demetrius and Russell. The three who survived were also juveniles, and the harm to each of them was the subject of a separate count in the charges.
The account Lane gave in the recorded interview later formed part of the factual basis for his plea, together with security video and the deputy's dash-camera recording. He told the detectives that he had been thinking about the act for about two weeks and that he had made it a goal he felt he had to finish. He said he had no quarrel with anyone, was not upset with anyone and had not been bullied, and that he did not know why he had done it. He said he had chosen no particular person, that he had seen the group before but did not know them, and that he knew what he had done was wrong and regretted it.
He also gave the detectives a short account of his own life: his schooling, his plans to study psychology, and his belief that he was more mature than others his age. The trial court and the appeals court later returned to these statements when they weighed his age and maturity at sentencing.
Because he was 17, the case began in the Geauga County Juvenile Court. On March 1, 2012, a complaint was filed there charging him, as a delinquent child, with three counts of aggravated murder, two counts of attempted aggravated murder and one count of felonious assault. The same day the state moved to transfer the case to the general division of the Court of Common Pleas so that he could be tried as an adult.
The juvenile court first addressed whether he was able to take part in his own defense. On March 21, 2012, it ordered a psychiatrist to evaluate his competency to assist his lawyers in the juvenile proceedings. After a hearing on May 2, 2012, the court found him competent for that purpose.
The transfer hearing followed on May 24, 2012. Ohio's transfer statutes left the juvenile judge only three questions to decide: whether the charged acts would be aggravated murder, murder, attempted aggravated murder or attempted murder if committed by an adult, whether the child was 16 or 17 at the time, and whether there was probable cause to believe he had committed them. The court found that Lane had been 17 on the date of the offenses and that probable cause existed on the three counts of aggravated murder and the two counts of attempted aggravated murder. Those were "category one" offenses under R.C. 2152.02, and transfer under R.C. 2152.10 and 2152.12 was mandatory. After hearing both sides and taking a recess, the juvenile judge ruled that the statute left him no discretion, and he sent the case to the general division. The defense did not present evidence at that hearing that Lane should be treated differently from an adult, a point his appellate lawyer later conceded.
On June 4, 2012, a Geauga County grand jury returned a six-count indictment. Counts One, Two and Three charged aggravated murder, an unclassified felony, under R.C. 2903.01(A), one count for each of the three who died. Each carried a specification under R.C. 2929.04(A)(5), for a course of conduct involving the purposeful killing of two or more people, which in an adult case would have made the count punishable by death, and a further specification under R.C. 2941.145(A). Counts Four and Five charged attempted aggravated murder, a felony of the first degree, under R.C. 2903.01(A) and 2923.02(A), each with the R.C. 2941.145(A) specification. Count Six charged felonious assault, a felony of the second degree, under R.C. 2903.11(A)(2), with the same specification.
Lane pleaded not guilty. He later entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. In the months that followed, the jail's mental health staff and the psychiatrist who had evaluated him for the juvenile court recorded his reports of hearing voices, delusions, anxiety, depression and past abuse.
On February 8, 2013, his lawyers asked the court to refer him for a competency evaluation by the court's Psycho-Diagnostic Clinic, and the court agreed. The psychologist who examined him concluded that he was competent to stand trial. Her report recorded that Lane now told her he had never experienced the symptoms he had described earlier, that he had made them up in order to appear mentally ill, and that he was disclosing this because he feared he would otherwise not be allowed to change his plea to guilty. She concluded that he had no mental condition or defect and found no signs of delusions, hallucinations, anxiety, depression or psychosis.
On February 26, 2013, the day before the first anniversary of the deaths, the trial court held a competency hearing and found him competent to stand trial. Later that same day he filed a written guilty plea, and the court held a change-of-plea hearing. After waiving his rights, Lane withdrew his plea of not guilty by reason of insanity and pleaded guilty to every count in the indictment, together with the R.C. 2941.145(A) specification on each count.
The plea rested on a bargain. In exchange, the state dismissed the three R.C. 2929.04(A)(5) specifications. Those could not have led to a death sentence in any event, because Lane had been under 18 at the time of the offenses. In support of the factual basis for the plea, the state offered the security video, the deputy's recording and the video of the interview with detectives. The court found that the plea was voluntary, accepted it, found him guilty on each count, ordered a presentence report and set a date for sentencing.
The sentencing hearing took place before a Geauga County Common Pleas judge on March 19, 2013. Lane, by then 18, had instructed his lawyer not to present any mitigation, and he told the court that he was waiving that right voluntarily and against his lawyer's advice. His lawyer nonetheless set out for the court the line of decisions from the Supreme Court of the United States on juvenile punishment and asked the judge to fashion a sentence that took account of the fact that his client had been a juvenile. The state did not ask for life without parole; it asked the court to impose a sentence appropriate to the circumstances. Lane wore a T-shirt printed with the word "killer" and directed an obscene gesture and remarks at the families of the dead.
The judge imposed life in prison without parole on each of Counts One, Two and Three. On Count Four he imposed eight years. On Count Five he imposed the statutory maximum of 11 years, citing the lasting harm to that survivor. On Count Six he imposed six years. He added three-year terms on four of the specifications, those attached to the three counts of aggravated murder and to Count Five. Every term was ordered served consecutively: three life terms without parole, followed by 25 years on the other counts and 12 years on the specifications, a total of 37 years beyond the life terms.
The judge also worked through the factors that Miller v. Alabama had identified for a juvenile facing life without parole, and the appeals court later summarized his findings. He considered Lane's age and maturity and found no mental or cognitive impairment. He considered his upbringing. He found that no adult or peer had pressured or led him, that he had planned the offenses alone and confided in no one, and that the harm to the six young people and their families was grave and lasting. Weighing those findings against Lane's youth, he concluded that life without parole was warranted. After sentencing, Lane was sent to the Ohio prison system's reception center and then to a state prison.
Lane, through a court-appointed lawyer, appealed to the Eleventh District Court of Appeals in April 2013. He raised four assignments of error. The first two, argued together, claimed that the juvenile court's mandatory transfer had violated his constitutional rights and that three terms of life without parole were unconstitutional. The third claimed that his trial lawyer had been ineffective if those issues had not been preserved. The fourth claimed that the record did not support consecutive sentences.
The state argued first that his guilty plea had waived any challenge to the transfer statutes, relying on a recent Ninth District decision then under review by the Supreme Court of Ohio. The Eleventh District rejected that argument. Under its own precedent, a voluntary guilty plea waives every defect except the lack of subject-matter jurisdiction, and it does not waive a juvenile's objection to constitutional deficiencies in the transfer hearing. The challenge was therefore properly before the court.
The panel heard oral argument on March 26, 2014. Lane was not present. His lawyer argued that the juvenile judge had moved the case without exercising any discretion and that Ohio treated 15-year-olds and 17-year-olds differently for no rational reason. The county prosecutor answered that several courts had already upheld the statute and that the trial judge had in fact weighed Lane's youth, though he had not said so in those words. The prosecutor conceded that the judge had not expressly stated on the record that he considered youth as a mitigating factor.
The court ruled on May 12, 2014, in a unanimous opinion of 36 pages. On due process, it held that Kent v. United States, the 1966 decision on juvenile waiver, required a hearing, counsel and a statement of reasons, and that Lane had received all three: a probable-cause hearing at which he was represented, followed by a written entry with findings of fact. Due process did not demand a separate hearing on whether he could be rehabilitated in the juvenile system. On equal protection, the court applied the rational-basis test, which Lane conceded governed, and held that the legislature could rationally treat 16- and 17-year-olds charged with the gravest offenses differently from 14- and 15-year-olds. On the Eighth Amendment, it held that a transfer to adult court was not a punishment at all, so it could not be a cruel and unusual one.
On the sentence itself, the court held that Miller barred only mandatory life without parole for juveniles, while Ohio's scheme left the trial judge a choice between life without parole and life with parole eligibility after 20, 25 or 30 years. Roper v. Simmons, which barred the death penalty for juveniles, did not apply because Lane had not been sentenced to death, and Graham v. Florida, which barred life without parole for juveniles who had not committed homicide, did not apply because he had been convicted of three aggravated murders. The court then measured the sentencing against State v. Long, decided by the Supreme Court of Ohio in March 2014, a year after Lane's sentencing, which held that a trial court must consider a juvenile's youth as mitigating before imposing life without parole and that the record must show it did so. The appeals court found that although the trial judge had not used the word "mitigating," the record showed he had considered each Miller factor and given each its weight, and that some factors not favoring Lane did not mean his youth had been ignored. It distinguished Long, where the trial court had not mentioned the offender's age at all and had sentenced him together with two adult codefendants. It held that the sentence fell within the statutory range for every count and was not so disproportionate as to shock the community's sense of justice.
The third assignment failed because the court had found the transfer challenge preserved, and because trial counsel had objected to the sentence and cited Miller, Graham and Roper. The fourth failed under the deferential standard of R.C. 2953.08(G)(2): the trial court had made each finding required by R.C. 2929.14(C)(4) for consecutive terms, and the record supported them. The judgment was affirmed. The presiding judge and a third judge concurred in the opinion.
Lane then asked the Eleventh District to appoint his appellate lawyer to represent him before the Supreme Court of Ohio. In a two-page judgment entry filed on May 22, 2014, the same panel refused. It held that neither exception in the Supreme Court's rules of practice applied, since he was not defending a favorable appellate decision and the Supreme Court had not ordered an appointment, and that a defendant who had already had appointed counsel on his appeal as of right had no right to appointed counsel on a discretionary appeal. Lane had been found indigent.
On the evening of Thursday, September 11, 2014, Lane, then 20, and two other inmates escaped from the state prison in western Ohio where he was being held. Lane was recaptured at about 1:20 a.m. on Friday, September 12, close to the prison. The same day he was moved to a higher-security state prison.
No new conviction followed. In October 2014 the Allen County prosecutor announced that he would not file an escape charge against Lane.
In December 2016 Lane was serving his three terms of life without parole in the Ohio prison system. Ohio's later juvenile parole statute, R.C. 2967.132, opens parole review to most prisoners who offended before 18, but division (D) excludes a prisoner serving a sentence for the purposeful killing of three or more people as the principal offender, who may be considered for parole only in accordance with the sentence imposed. Lane pleaded guilty to three counts of aggravated murder as the sole offender.
Lane gave no motive. He told detectives he did not know why he had acted and that he had chosen no one in particular. The sentencing judge treated the motive as unclear.
His mental state was contested for almost a year. The insanity plea entered in 2012 rested on symptoms he had described to a psychiatrist and to jail staff. In early 2013 he told the court's psychologist that he had invented them, and she found no mental condition or defect. He then withdrew the insanity plea. No court ever found him insane or incompetent.
Whether the trial judge properly weighed his youth was the main question on appeal, because the judge never used the word "mitigating" on the record. The Eleventh District resolved it against Lane in May 2014.
February 27, 2012: Three teenagers are killed and three more wounded in Chardon, Ohio; Lane, 17, is taken into custody by a Geauga County sheriff's deputy that morning and questioned by detectives.
March 1, 2012: A complaint is filed in the Geauga County Juvenile Court; the state moves to transfer the case to adult court.
March 21, 2012: The juvenile court orders a competency evaluation by a forensic psychiatrist.
May 2, 2012: After a hearing, the juvenile court finds Lane competent for the juvenile proceedings.
May 24, 2012: At the transfer hearing the court finds probable cause on five category one offenses and transfers the case under R.C. 2152.10 and 2152.12.
June 4, 2012: A six-count indictment is returned; Lane pleads not guilty and later not guilty by reason of insanity.
February 8, 2013: The defense moves for a competency evaluation by the court's Psycho-Diagnostic Clinic.
February 26, 2013: Lane is found competent, withdraws the insanity plea and pleads guilty to all six counts; the R.C. 2929.04(A)(5) specifications are dismissed.
March 19, 2013: He is sentenced to three consecutive terms of life without parole plus 37 years.
April 2013: He appeals to the Eleventh District Court of Appeals.
March 26, 2014: Oral argument before a three-judge panel.
May 12, 2014: The Eleventh District unanimously affirms the convictions and sentence.
May 22, 2014: The court refuses to appoint counsel for a discretionary appeal to the Supreme Court of Ohio.
September 11 and 12, 2014: Lane escapes from a state prison with two other inmates and is recaptured early the next morning; he is moved to a higher-security state prison.
October 2014: The Allen County prosecutor announces that no escape charge will be filed.