Ohio Supreme Court Forum

The Ohio Supreme Court candidates, Bill O’Neill, Terrence O’Donnell, Nancy Fuerst, and Judith Ann Lanzinger participate in an on air forum sponsored by ONN and the League of Women Voters Thursday night October 21, 2004 at the Court building on Front Street.

 

Terrence O’Donnell is an American Justice of the supreme court of the U.S. state of Ohio.  He served as a Cuyahoga County, common pleas court judge for 15 years until 1994, when he ran for a seat on the Ohio Court of Appeals for the Eighth District against former Ohio Chief Justice Frank Celebrezze. He defeated Celebrezze and served on the Eighth District bench until his resignation to run for the Ohio Supreme Court in 2000 in a failed attempt to unseat Ohio Supreme Court Justice Alice Robie Resnik. In 2003, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Deborah L. Cook resigned from the court to accept an appointment by the George W. Bush administration to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Governor Robert A. Taft II then appointed O’Donnell to fill the vacancy, effective May 2003. On November 2, 2004, O’Donnell won a special election, defeating Democrat William M. O’Neill with 61% of the vote, entitling him to finish Cook’s term, which ended in 2006. He won re-election in 2006, again defeating O’Neill by almost 20 points, and was sworn in January 2007 to a full six-year term.

Judith Lanzinger is an American jurist. She retired as a justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. She has long been involved in the legal profession. After graduating from the University of Toledo, she attended the National Judicial College at the University of Nevada, Reno, at which she was the second woman nationwide to be awarded a master’s degree in judicial studies; she has taught classes in this field since 1990. Lanzinger’s professional career included many different positions in the halls of justice: Toledo Municipal Court, the Lucas County Common Pleas Court, and the Sixth District Court of Appeals. Lanzinger, a Republican, was elected to the Supreme Court in 2004, taking office on New Year’s Day 2005.

Nancy A. Fuerst is a judge on the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas General Division in Cleveland, Ohio. She joined the court in 1997. Fuerst was re-elected to the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas in 2014, winning a new term that expires on January 1, 2021.

William Michael O’Neill is an American lawyer, judge and political figure. He was elected to the Ohio Supreme Court in 2012, for a term beginning January 2013. He served as an appellate judge on the Ohio Eleventh District Court of Appeals for 10 years. Twice, O’Neill was the Democratic nominee for U.S. Representative in Ohio’s 14th congressional district. He announced on October 29, 2017 as a candidate for Ohio Governor in the 2018 election.

On October 29, 2017, O’Neill announced that he would join the Democratic primary for Ohio governor. During his announcement, he laid out a platform of minimum wage increases, tax incentives for solar power, mental health care expansion and marijuana legalization in Ohio. Less than a week later he announced that he will recuse himself from new Supreme Court cases and will resign by the February 7, filing deadline due to potential ethical conflicts.

On November 17, 2017, O’Neill stirred controversy by posting a Facebook post responding to recent controversy regarding allegations of sexual assault against U.S. Senator Al Franken. He referred to those speaking against Franken as “dogs of war” and decried a “national feeding frenzy” against age-old sexual indiscretions, and he stated that speaking on behalf of all heterosexual males that he been sexually intimate with 50 attractive females in the past fifty years. In response, his communications director resigned from his campaign. Multiple state officials, including Ohio Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, former state representative and fellow gubernatorial candidate Connie Tillich, Dayton mayor and fellow gubernatorial candidate Nan Whaley, and Lieutenant Governor Mary Taylor, criticized O’Neill’s comments, with Pillich and Whaley calling for him to resign from his position as associate justice. O’Neill refused to apologize, and told his critics to “lighten up.”

 

Photographed with Canon 1D MkII cameras in RAW mode with L series lenses.