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The Bartholomew County judges have issued a statement regarding protective orders.
An online registry shows that Bartholomew Superior Court 2 Judge Jon Rohde’s court issued significantly fewer protective orders over the course of last year than Bartholomew County’s other two courts.
The data, which comes from an analysis of records in the Indiana Office of Judicial Administration’s Protection Order Registry, shows that 446 requests for protective orders filed in Bartholomew County in 2022 were granted.
Of those, 103 were issued by Rohde’s court — Bartholomew Superior Court 2 — or 23%, the records show. By comparison, 205 were issued in Bartholomew Superior Court 1, Judge James Worton’s court, or 46%, while 138 were issued in Bartholomew Circuit Court, Judge Kelly Benjamin’s court, or 31%.
Rohde was in his first year as judge in Bartholomew Superior Court 2 in 2022 and is an attorney with a law enforcement background as a former Columbus police chief.
Worton also has a law enforcement background, and previously served as Columbus police chief and was first elected judge in 2012. Benjamin is in her second term as judge, first elected in 2016. Prior to her election as judge, she served as a pro tem judge in the local court system and as the Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp. attorney.
County officials said requests for protective orders are randomly assigned to each Bartholomew County judge, meaning that each court has an equal chance of being assigned a request. However, some cases involve multiple requests for protective orders, which could influence the figures.
Overall, local records show that 516 requests for protective orders were filed in the county last year, suggesting that about 14% of the requests filed last year were denied.
The issue of protection orders has been thrust into the spotlight after Columbus resident and mother of two Julie A. Schmidtke was shot to death last month inside a local residence by her estranged husband in an apparent murder suicide — just 10 days after Rohde denied her request for a protective order against her attacker.
The victim had requested a protective order against Charles Schmidtke on Oct. 21, alleging that he had physically harmed her, committed a sexual offense against her and committed repeated acts of harassment, court records state.
She provided screenshots of numerous social media posts and messages by Charles Schmidtke as evidence to support her claims, according to court records.
Rohde denied the request for a protective order during a hearing on Dec. 9 in Bartholomew Superior Court 2. According to court documents, both Charles Schmidtke and Julie Schmidtke attended the hearing in which Rohde made the ruling and each was represented by an attorney.
“(The) petitioner has not shown, by a preponderance of the evidence, that a sex offense and harassment has occurred sufficient to justify the issuance of an order for protection,” Rohde stated in the court order dated Dec. 9. “It is therefore ordered by the court that the petition for an order for protection is hereby denied.”
Rohde declined to comment on why he denied her request, stating that “judges are ethically prohibited by the Rules of Judicial Conduct from making any public comment about the rationale for decisions made in the courtroom.”
Julie A. Schmidtke, 36, was found dead Dec. 19 from multiple gunshot wounds in a residence on the 2200 block of Sumpter Court along with her estranged husband, Charles Schmidtke, 41, who died from a single gunshot wound to the head, officials said.
“I think the system is broke,” said Craig Yow, the victim’s father. “She was trying to get a restraining order. …She had filed charges against him earlier. Another police department had called the Columbus police to have them check on her welfare because they were concerned that he had done something to her. There’s a whole host of things that there’s a breakdown in the system.”
Investigators have told the victim’s family that Charles Schmidtke broke into the Sumpter Court residence on Dec. 19 wearing body armor, dressed in black and had multiple firearms, Yow said. Both of Julie Schmidtke’s children were inside the residence at the time of the break-in, Yow said.
Charles Schmidtke shot Julie A. Schmidtke as many as 13 times, Yow said. There were nine rounds fired in a hallway before Charles Schmidtke dragged the victim into a bedroom, he said.
Yow said that one of the children reported that Charles Schmidtke was smiling as he dragged his mother into a bedroom, reportedly telling the boy, “I’m only here for your mom, call your dad to come get you.”
Inside the bedroom, Charles Schmidtke shot her five more times, “and probably the last two shots were to kill the five-month-old” fetus, Yow said.
Then, Charles Schmidtke removed his body armor, placed some of his guns on a bed and “what the police said is it appears he sat down, crossed his legs and sat in front of her and shot himself,” Yow said.
This week, The Republic contacted all three judges — Rohde, Worton and Benjamin — to ask if they planned to discuss protective orders and how they are handled in the county in light of the apparent murder-suicide following the denial of a protective order.
In a joint statement, the judges said, “We regularly discuss how to best serve the people of Bartholomew County, including handling of protective orders.”
“While judges are ethically prohibited by the Rules of Judicial Conduct from making any public comment about the rationale for decisions made in the courtroom on specific cases, we look forward to continuing to meet and have an open dialogue with local advocacy groups in the community to educate the public on court policy, procedure and the law related to protection order proceedings,” the judges said in the statement. “We encourage anyone experiencing intimate partner violence to reach out to advocates like Turning Point for assistance.”
The judges declined to comment on the disparity in the number of protective orders issued by each court.
“Each protective order petition that comes before the courts are decided on the individual merits,” the judges said. “We are unable to comment on groups of cases that are decided in one court relative to another court for a given period of time because each protection order petition and case have different allegations, facts and evidence.”
Judge’s discretion
Judges in Indiana have quite a bit of discretion when deciding whether to grant a request for a protective order, said Seth Lahn, who was a senior lecturer for 27 years at the Indiana University Mauer School of Law before retiring at the end of last semester and faculty adviser for the Protective Order Project.
Seth Lahn
“Indiana has a good protection order statute,” Lahn said. “It is it is quite broad in terms of all the different situations it applies to. It is written in a way that can apply to a wide variety of situations. But, of course, that also leaves a lot of room for judicial interpretation.”
Under state law, an individual who seeks a protective order must allege that the perpetrator committed domestic or family violence, sex offense or stalking against them, according to the Mauer School of Law.
The perpetrator also must be a family or household member of the person seeking the protective order, except in cases of sex offenses, stalking or harassment, when protective orders can be issued against anyone.
However, state law has broadly defined family as “everything from, spouses to parents to children to stepparents to almost anything you can imagine — someone that you have dated just once is considered under the broad definition of family,” Lahn said.
Additionally, “the other big element” that judges consider “is whether or not the protection order is needed to remedy and prevent future domestic violence, and, as you can imagine, that again requires a lot of judgment by the judges of the particular situation,” Lahn said.
However, judges “have full discretion” in protective order hearings “to listen to the testimony, decide who’s credible, and just based on that petitioner’s testimony, grant the protection order,” Lahn said. “So there’s no requirement of corroboration necessarily or anything like that. But you know, again it there are so many different circumstances here that it really is a tough call a lot of the time for a judge.”
Lahn said the purpose of protective orders is to prevent and curtail domestic and relationship violence, including stalking and harassment and are “incredibly effective” at doing so, though they are “not a complete panacea.”
In many cases, the order serves as “wake-up call” to the perpetrator and disincentivizes them from going near the person who requested the order as they realize there may be serious legal consequences if they do, Lahn said.
“I hate to say it, but if someone is intent on murdering someone and then committing suicide, they’re not going to worry about violating a protection order,” Lahn said. “…That having been said, I’ve been doing these cases since the late 1990s — maybe I’ve done 1,000 (cases), maybe more — in the vast majority of cases where protection orders are entered, they work. I would say I’ve had a minuscule number where people violate them because in most cases, it’s not the sort of extreme homicidal situation we’re talking about. And it’s enough of a wake-up call to the respondent to realize there may be serious consequences.”
