OHIO SUPREME COURT Ruling overturns order that man not procreate



The man has seven children by five women and failed to pay child support.
COLUMBUS (AP) -- The Ohio Supreme Court today overturned a judge's order that a man avoid having more children while on probation for failing to pay child support.
The court ruled 5-2 in favor of Sean Talty, saying his sentence was too broad because it did not include a method for lifting the ban if Talty caught up with his child-support payments.
Talty, 32, has seven children by five women. He was required to make "reasonable" efforts to avoid conception during his five-year probation after being convicted of not supporting three of the children.
Providing a procedure for lifting the ban "would have been, at the very least, an easy alternative that would have better accommodated Talty's procreation rights," Chief Justice Thomas Moyer wrote for the court's majority.
Medina County Common Pleas Judge James L. Kimbler issued the order, which was later upheld by an appellate court in Akron. The case now returns to Kimbler for resentencing.
Justices Paul Pfeifer and Evelyn Lundberg Stratton dissented.
"Given Talty's propensity to sire children, the antiprocreation condition must also be considered in the nature of punishment," Pfeifer wrote.
Case background
Talty pleaded no contest in 2002 to failing to pay $38,000 in child support for three of his children with his former wife and another woman.
Since then, he has paid the court-ordered $150 weekly in back child support and avoided fathering more children, his attorney, J. Dean Carro, has said.
At a hearing before the high court in May, prosecutors and Talty's attorney agreed that reproduction was a right protected by the U.S. Constitution.
But the state Supreme Court was asked to decide whether that right may be curtailed for someone on probation or parole -- the same way parolees may be ordered to provide urine samples for drug testing.