The bill is named after Jacob Alan Barker, who died in August 2015 of blunt force trauma a day after he was left in the care of Justin Payne.
Payne initially called 9-1-1 and reported Jacob was having trouble breathing after choking on a Pop Tart. Dayton police arrested Payne later that day, and jurors ultimately convicted him of involuntary manslaughter, endangering children and tampering with evidence.
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At the time of his arrest, Payne was still on probation after serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence for an earlier conviction of felony child endangering for causing serious injuries to an 8-week-old child in 2011.
Members of Jacob’s family say if they had known about Payne’s previous conviction, Jacob might be alive today.
“Had this been available to us, (my daughter) would have ceased any connection. She didn’t know. She didn’t have a clue,” said Lisa Gaffney, Jacob’s maternal grandmother.”
Publicly accessible databases like the sex offender registry and the one proposed in HB 612 can be “counterproductive” and push those on the database to “the margins of society,” according to Gary Daniels, chief lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio.
Most states authorize central registries of “child maltreatment records” that are “typically kept confidential and used only by child protection agencies or sometimes for employer screening,” according to the Children’s Bureau of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services.
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Indiana has a public registry of people convicted of child abuse or neglect after legislators there passed Kirk's Law in 2016. The law was named after 19-month-old Kirk Coleman, who died at the hands of his daycare provider who had a previous record of child abuse.
Indiana’s registry lists the offender’s name, age, city of residence and a description of the crime.
State Rep. Rick Perales, R-Beavercreek, is the primary sponsor on HB 612.
Jacob's Law creates the framework for "a child endangerment registry" to allow Ohioans … an easy and streamlined avenue for families to look-up individuals that may come into contact with their children," Perales told house committee members.
“No more children should have to suffer at the hands of child abusers, when there are clear steps we can take to prevent such tragedies,” Perales said. “What makes Jacob’s death especially tragic is that his murderer was not a first-time offender … It should not take a second offense, and a second tragedy, to eliminate the opportunity for people like Jacob’s murderer to harm more children.”
Payne was sent to prison for 16 years in Jacob’s death and is an inmate at the Chillicothe Correctional Institution.
“You trust people. You want to see the good in people,” Gaffney said. “You try to run checks on people, and it costs money. Just like the sex offender registry, this data will be available to everyone.”
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The ACLU’s Daniels said public registries such as this can cause problems.
“What happens to these people when they’re on a registry? They get harassed. Their neighbors get harassed. They can’t get jobs. They can’t get housing,” Daniels said. “You do the crime, you do the time, then you should have the opportunity to put your life back together. These databases many times don’t allow for that.”
Daniels said it’s also a slippery slope and points to the state’s DNA database, which initially targeted those convicted of certain felony offenses and now includes those “merely arrested” for felonies.
Perales said the registry would not be launched until the program is funded either by the attorney general’s office or the general assembly.
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