All rise for Judge Lyons: A little look at his record for a change

BY LINDSAY JACKSON
NOV. 20, 2007
photo courteous of Area I Court website

He spends every Thursday listening to people talk all day. Although he makes good money off of other people’s failings, he does not take pleasure in their hardships but rather in upholding the law and the defendants’ rights. For Butler County Area I Court Judge Robert Lyons, acting as the sole judge in Oxford’s tiny courthouse cannot possible be described as simply sitting in a chair, wearing black robes and listening to men and women bicker back and forth in tailored suits. There’s so much more to the man behind the gavel.


From practicing horse-riding to practicing the law

Robert Hagen Lyons was born and raised on a horse farm in West Chester, Ohio. His mother was a homemaker, though Lyons explicitly states this title was an understatement on a farm that raised some 50 horses for breeding and showing. His father was an attorney who retired before he began law school, never, therefore pressuring his son into the business.

“It’s something I always thought about,” said Lyons.

Lyons is a Miami University alumnus, graduating in 1977 with a degree in business. He then attended Chase College in Kentucky and received his law degree in 1980. He met his wife, Beatrice, in San Antonio on spring break during his undergraduate years and married her one year later. To this day, Lyons has remained in the greater Cincinnati area of West Chester with his wife and four children.

“It’s home,” said Lyons. “I haven’t gone too far.”

His two oldest children, ages 33 and 31, attended Miami for undergraduate school while his 26-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter currently attend Ohio University and the University of Tennessee, respectively.

Once he graduated from law school, Lyons began working for a Cincinnati law firm doing tax work. He then worked for a pension company but eventually left because he did not enjoy the traveling the job required, especially with three children at home at the time. In 1983, Lyons “hung the shingle in West Chester” and opened his own private practice, Lyons & Lyons. For the next 12 years, his father joined him in the practice. Since 1995, he’s been a sole practitioner.

His part-time job, acting as sitting judge of Oxford on Thursdays, did not come easily. In 1992, Lyons was the acting judge in Oxford, essentially filling in for the sitting judge when necessary. Then, in 1994, he ran for and lost the position. In 1999, Gov. Robert Taft appointed Lyons to the position when the previous judge left for the Common Pleas Court. In 2000, he ran for the job and won. He ran again in 2006, and won, securing his job until 2012.

Although not running for the position solely to stay close to his alma mater, Lyons couldn’t stay away from Miami too long, returning to the university to teach a business law class for five years.

Lyons said working in the Butler Area I Court is quite different from other areas he’s worked in prior.

“It’s very unique being a college town,” said Lyons.

In Oxford, Lyons sees more cases involving alcohol consumption, assaults and disorderly conduct, “not necessarily high, violent crimes,” he said, but not as many traffic cases as in municipal and county courts.

“Percentage wise, it’s [the Area I Court] is different from municipal and county courts.”

Miami University drinking culture – “It’s an epidemic.”

Even though Lyons has dealt with Miami students and alcohol-related crimes every week for nine years, he has not become numb to student alcohol cases over the years.

“In Oxford, underage alcohol consumption has to be taken seriously,” he said. “It is a very serious problem… binge drinking among college students is a huge problem…it’s an epidemic.”

He said many often cite the age-old argument, “if you’re old enough to go to war, you should be old enough to drink.” He believes the legal drinking age of 21 is an arbitrary number.

“At one point, 21 was the year of majority,” he said. “Now, at 18 [the new age of majority], you can vote, get married, buy a house… but you can’t drink. It’s better to change the age of majority to 21 than the age of drinking to 18.”

According to Lyons, having a drink or two itself is not the key issue.

“A young person having a beer is not the problem,” said Lyons. “In fact, a young person drinking to excess is not the problem. Widespread drinking correlates with violence, assault, rapes, burglaries and even deaths. Drinking is not just a problem in itself… it leads to other crimes.”

Lyons said he and the city of Oxford are doing all they can to curtail this problem, yet remains a major problem.

By law, underage consumption can be punishable by 180 days in jail and $1,000 in fines.

“It would not be proper to put someone in jail for consuming one beer when under 21,” he said.

“Every year we make the punishment more severe… it’s just not going down, which is frustrating.”

But, he adds, “a message has to be sent,” and this is precisely why Lyons has implemented an educational solution. First-time offenders can now partake in the Diversion Program, which requires offenders to participate in a two-day alcohol program, perform community service and make a donation to the city.

Although frustrated by the number of students facing underage consumption or possession of false identification charges, despite the Diversion Program’s efforts, Lyons has seen success in the decreasing number of students who re-offend.

“They hopefully won’t do it [re-offend], but if they do, they will hopefully do it in a much more responsible way,” Lyons said.

Students are not cited with alcohol violations because they are sitting quietly in their houses and having a drink, he said. Instead, students usually act in a way that brings attention to themselves. Lyons believes the number of re-offenders is decreasing because students who continue to engage in these illegal activities do so in a less obvious manner.

Over the past nine years, Lyons has seen Miami’s drinking problems worsen with each passing school year. Despite this, he does not believe Miami’s issues with alcohol are any different from those at other universities.

“I see it across the board,” he said. “I don’t pretend that urban schools don’t have the same problems.”

In addition to underage alcohol consumption, Lyons speaks about the consequences of drunk driving and driving under the influence (DUI) convictions. First, he said, it’s a life-time conviction that is never erased from one’s criminal record. Secondly, it’s a very expensive crime.

“I drive a nice car, I bought a nice house, I can afford to send my kids to private schools, and I can go on what I think are pretty nice vacations,” Lyons said, “all because people drink and drive.”

The dog abuse case

On July 12, Otis Clark Jr., 48, of Somerville pleaded no contest to animal abuse after his 2-year-old dog, China, was found with her chain imbedded an inch deep into her neck, so deep that the flesh around the wound began to rot. The chain had to be surgically removed, leaving permanent scarring.

When Lyons ruled in favor of returning the abused dog to his owner, the Oxford community was outraged by the decision. People protested in the streets and local newspapers published a slew of stories with critical quotes from animal rights advocates and dog-lovers. During a major protest outside the Oxford court house, Lyons, in a rare public statement for a judge, justified his ruling. Although the newspapers were willing to include the opinions of everyone on the case from here to Iowa, many papers did not include his press release explaining his decision, he said.

“I’m not a fan of the media,” Lyons said. “I would fight to the death for their right to print, but I’ve become jaded and disappointed with the media.”

With subject matter as convoluted as the legal system, Lyons said most media professionals fail to accurately report court proceedings and decisions, and instead write a sensational story. And, he adds, sometimes the truth is more interesting than a fabrication. Lyons identified two main factors contributing to the media’s inaccurate portrayal of recent headline-making cases occurring in Oxford.

“It’s a combination of ignorance and they have no interest in becoming educated,” said Lyons.

Assistant Prosecuting Attorney for Butler County Michael Baker agreed, saying many media reporters have little knowledge of the law and how it works, thereby printing their interpretation of the law rather than how events actually transpired.

Lyons explained he found Clark guilty of the neglect charges but returned the dog to his owner primarily because he could then keep a close eye on the dog’s future care. Had he relinquished ownership of the dog, he would have been powerless to control how the family treated any future pets, he said.

“What I didn’t mention in my press release was dogs or domestic animals are property,” he said. “I shouldn’t take someone else’s property without due process of the law. But could I have taken this man’s dog away? Yes.”

It was obvious to local attorneys that the decision to return the neglected dog to his owner was nothing short of difficult.

“No one had more angst over this decision than the judge,” said Oxford attorney Daniel Haughey.

“It was a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation,” said attorney F. Harrison Green.

“He [Lyons] couldn’t prevent them [Clark’s family] from getting another dog. Him, maybe, but not the family. They were going to have one anyways and there’s no jurisdiction over the family.”

The media reported animal rights groups’ belief that abuse needs to be stopped at the first sign, because of the strong link between animal abuse and subsequent spousal and child abuse. Lyons believes this is not necessarily the case.

“First of all, the problem with that is you can link just about anything,” said Lyons. “If someone that is a heroin addict at one point drank beer, does that mean that everyone that drinks beer will become addicted to heroin? The correlation the press made between abused dogs and children … it’s not the same thing.”

Lyons was particularly upset about the media’s attempt to link this case with the recent Michael Vick case involving organized dog fighting. He said there is no connection between the two.

“One [case] was this multimillionaire that was fighting dogs for profit and the other one was this construction worker that just left his dog tied up outside,” he said.

“Michael Vick’s offensive behavior was intentional,” added Green.

Lyons observed that the public and the media had a “heyday” with the dog case, yet not a single person bats an eye when women and children are abused or, similarly, when children are returned to abusive households.

“Do children go back to abusive parents?” Lyons asks. “Of course. All the time.”

“It seems there’s more value in dogs than in women in children,” added Green. “The line has become blurred between people and animals.”

Train death yields alcohol charges

On April 14, Miami sophomore student Beth Speidel, 19, was struck and killed by an eastbound CSX train near the Locust Street tracks in Oxford. According to a coroner’s report, Speidel died of head trauma with a blood-alcohol level of .229, nearly three times the legal limit. The state of Ohio charged four of Speidel’s with providing a place, their Brown Road apartment complex, to furnish alcohol to the underage Speidel and one woman for allegedly furnishing Speidel with alcohol at an Oxford bar.

As the lone Oxford judge, all five cases landed before Lyons. Because four of the cases have not been resolved, he would not comment on the specifics. He did mention, however, that brought against Kristina Sicker and Kathleen Byrne for providing a place for Speidel to drink were highly unusual.

“I can’t remember many, if any, cases like Sicker and Byrne’s,” he said.

“It was unusual in the way it [the case] was discovered,” said prosecuting attorney Baker, pointing out the underage drinking was discovered as a result of a death investigation. If Speidel hadn’t died that night, no one would have known about the illegal drinking, he noted.

A third friend, Christina Carr, was also charged with providing a place for Speidel to drink. The difference in her case, however, was that she had an alibi for the night in question. In Lyons’ opinion, Carr’s knowledge that her roommates would be drinking underage in their apartment renders her just as guilty as if she were present.

“It’s about knowledge,” said Lyons. “You don’t want to provide a place for underage people to drink. Anything involving underage people and alcohol is a catch-all.”

In October, Lyons ruled in favor of Sicker and Byrne’s motion to suppress evidence in their cases, thereby preventing the prosecution from moving forward. The state has, however, appealed Lyons’ decision and the case is currently under review in Ohio’s 12th District Court of Appeals. If the decision is appealed, the case will return to the Butler County Area I Court and Lyons will proceed to hear the case with their earlier statements to police as evidence.

To explain why he decided in favor of Sicker and Byrne’s motions to suppress, Lyons said he is particularly offended when people’s constitutional rights are violated: when questioned by and in the custody of the Oxford Police Department, the women were not told their Miranda rights, specifically their right to remain silent and to hire an attorney, a clear violation of their Fifth, Sixth and 14th Amendment rights.

“I am offended when the court deprives one of their Constitutional rights,” he said. “Some people are upset when people get off because of a ‘technicality.’ More often than not, the ‘technicality’ is a constitutional right. These constitutional rights are there to protect us not just against crimes and criminals but to protect us all. That’s why it’s so important to protect constitutional rights.”

Lyons said his belief in upholding a person’s constitutional rights are central to his job as an attorney and as a judge.

“It’s near and dear to my heart,” he said.