Jennifer McTernan is a part time Magistrate at Rocky River Municipal Court and a criminal defense attorney with 12 years in practice since graduating from CSU College of Law and being admitted to the Ohio bar in 2013. Since then, she has also been admitted to the Sixth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Northern District of Ohio, and the Southern District of Ohio.
As a practicing attorney, Jennifer has her own legal practice working out of an office in Cleveland’s Buckeye neighborhood, handling cases for both retained clients and assigned clients – those that are indigent and do not have the financial ability to hire an attorney. She is in courtrooms on an almost daily basis throughout Cuyahoga County handling a wide variety of cases ranging from low level misdemeanors to high levels felonies to appeals. Yet, for the last 12 years, the majority of her practice has been handling cases downtown at the Justice Center in the same court she is running for judge.
While working as a Magistrate at Rocky River Municipal Court, Jennifer has further gained judicial experience presiding over a variety of criminal matters that come before the court. In this role, Jennifer has already seen just how her background in criminal defense litigation has truly been an asset in the additional mindfulness and perspective it has brought to this judicial role. As a criminal defense attorney, Jennifer has had the opportunity to not just briefly interact with those that now appear in front of her, but has actually gotten to know them at length throughout her representation of them, making her more mindful of the significance and impact of not just any sentence she now imposes, but any decision she now makes from the bench with the potential to impact those that now appear in front of her. Similarly, Jennifer has also found that her extensive experience handling cases on Cuyahoga County’s Mental Health and Developmental Disabilities specialty dockets has allowed her to better identify, understand, and address those needs from the bench. She recognizes that perhaps the most effective deterrent to someone ending up back in court with a future case is addressing the underlying causes and understands just how critical it is to get individuals access to services, not just in the resolution of their cases, but in their everyday lives. She has brought these additional insights with her to this Magistrate role and now asks for the opportunity to bring them to the Common Pleas bench.
Jennifer McTernan is a lifelong Cuyahoga County resident. She grew up in Lyndhurst and is a proud product of the South Euclid-Lyndhurst public school system. She now lives in Lakewood where she is an active member of the Lakewood Democratic Club. She has also been on the Board of the Cuyahoga Criminal Defense Lawyers Association since 2019 and is actively involved with a variety of other local professional and non profit organizations.
