## Facts

- Betty S. Lucas obtained a temporary protection order (TPO) against her ex-husband, Joseph Lucas.
- Despite the TPO, Betty invited Joseph to her home for their child’s birthday.
- The parties drank alcohol, argued, and a physical altercation occurred, injuring both.
- Police charged Joseph with violating the TPO and charged Betty with complicity to violate a protection order and domestic violence.
- Betty pleaded no contest to complicity and guilty to domestic violence; she received suspended 90-day jail terms and probation.
- Betty appealed only the complicity conviction; the court of appeals affirmed and certified a conflict with another appellate district.

## Issues

1. Whether the protected subject of a temporary protection order may be prosecuted for aiding and abetting the restrained party’s violation of that same order under Ohio’s complicity statute.

## Decision

- The Ohio Supreme Court reversed the complicity conviction.
- The Court held that the protected subject of a TPO may not be prosecuted for aiding and abetting the restrained party in violating the order.
- The Court resolved the inter-district conflict by adopting the view that the protected person falls within a protected class for purposes of accomplice liability.
- The domestic-violence conviction was not before the Court and was unaffected.

## Legal Principles

- When a criminal prohibition is designed to protect a specific class of persons, members of that protected class generally may not be charged as accomplices in the violation of that prohibition.
- Protection-order statutes are intended to shield domestic-violence victims and deter restrained parties; interpreting complicity to allow prosecution of the protected person would frustrate that purpose.
- Ohio’s complicity statute must be read in context with the protection-order scheme; the legislature did not intend to impose accomplice liability on the order’s intended beneficiary for conduct facilitating the restrained party’s violation.

## Conclusion

The Ohio Supreme Court held that a person protected by a temporary protection order is within the class the order is meant to protect and therefore cannot be prosecuted for complicity in the restrained party’s violation of that order, even if the protected person’s conduct appears to assist the violation.


State v. Lucas, 100 Ohio St. 3d 1 (Ohio 2003)