Reporter's Notebook: Judge has history with fairness

PORT CLINTON — The judge picked to oversee an investigation of whether an allegation that a 2008 rape investigation was mishandled is true already has a claim to fame that sets him apart from other retired Ohio judges. In 1994, Perry County Judge Linton Lewis Jr. ordered the state legislature to fix the school funding system in Ohio and declared education a fundamental right of all children, on an equal basis. A 2018 file photo/Lancaster Eagle Gazette. Lancaster Eagle Gazette It was a 30-day trial in his Perry County Courthouse in New Lexington, east of Columbus. According to a Wikipedia entry, it lasted 30 days, generated a 5,600-page transcript and 450 exhibits. On July 1, 1994, Judge Lewis ruled that every Ohio public school student was entitled to equal levels of public funding, declaring Ohio's method of funding schools through property taxes unconstitutional. He ordered the state's General Assembly to eliminate disparities in education based on wealth of individual communities. In other words, kids in Parma deserve the same level of funding for schools as do kids in Chagrin Falls. Kids in Sandusky deserve the same level as kids from Westlake and Avon Lake. The order has yet to be fulfilled. Judge Lewis retired in July 2010, but he could find himself at crosshairs with the state again. Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost has been fighting for weeks to keep a lid on the 2008 rape investigation because the accused man from back then is the same man who was accused of rape last year. But Yost believes the man was falsely accused in 2020, and he wants to convict the woman who accused him of a felony for allegedly lying about being raped. Yost has refused to look at the 2008 rape complaint, or a third rape complaint against the same man also filed in 2008, fearing it could undermine his prosecution of the woman. Judge Linton's next step, we're speculating, would be to assign special prosecutor and an investigator. We'll keep you posted. — Matt Westerhold