MAHONING COUNTY Motion filed by defense team alleges attempted extortion

By BOB JACKSON
VINDICATOR COURTHOUSE REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- A father-daughter legal defense team is accusing a former Mahoning County prosecutor of trying to extort money from a criminal defendant, and the current prosecutor and a defense attorney of doing nothing to stop it.
Attorneys Don L. Hanni Jr. and Heidi Hanni Wolff made the allegations in a motion they filed Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, asking that John F. Sylvester Jr. be released from prison. They cited prosecutorial misconduct and ineffective legal counsel as the reasons.
Prosecutor Paul Gains and defense attorney J. Gerald Ingram, who are identified in the motion, denied being a part of any such scheme.
"I'll save my [further] comments for the witness stand," Ingram said.
"I'm surprised at those allegations. I really am," Gains said.
The Hannis represent Sylvester, 28, of Jaguar Drive, Boardman, who is serving seven to 25 years in prison for the attempted murder of his former girlfriend, Nicole Pascarella. He's doing an additional three years for using a firearm.
Witnesses said Sylvester held Pascarella in a headlock outside a West Boulevard apartment complex in June 1996, then shot her in the face and neck.
Here was situation
When Sylvester was indicted by a county grand jury in July 1996, James A. Philomena was the county prosecutor. Philomena ran for re-election the next year and lost to Gains, who took office in 1998.
Philomena was eventually convicted in federal court of fixing cases while he was prosecutor. He recently completed a four-year federal prison sentence and was immediately taken to a state prison, where he'll serve two years for similar activity.
The motion says that sometime in 1998, after he'd left office, Philomena began representing Pascarella for a possible civil lawsuit against Sylvester.
Hanni and Wolff said it should have been a conflict of interest for Philomena to represent the victim of a crime in which he'd prosecuted the offender. They said Gains or Ingram, who represented Sylvester at that time, should have reported it.
What's alleged
When Philomena realized that the statutory time limit for filing a civil action had expired, he began trying to squeeze money out of the Sylvester family by demanding a cash payment as restitution to be included in plea negotiations for Sylvester's criminal charges, the motion says.
It says the demand rose to $250,000, then was reduced to $155,000. No money was paid.
Hanni and Wolff said Philomena orchestrated the extortion attempt but that Gains and Ingram were aware of it and did nothing to stop it.
Wolff said that if Sylvester had agreed to pay the money, prosecutors would have recommended that he be sentenced under revised state law that imposed a definite prison term, instead of under the previous law that required an indefinite sentence. The law changed July 1, 1996.
The motion says Sylvester should have been sentenced under the new law, which would have made him eligible for shock probation by now. It says Gains offered Sylvester a flat nine-year sentence if he'd plead guilty.
Gains said the offer was made before the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that a straight-time sentence was not allowable since the crime happened in June 1996 when the old law was still in effect.
"That offer was an attempt to resolve the case and spare this victim the trauma of having to go through a trial," Gains said. "For them to say it was anything else -- that's one hell of a leap."
bjackson@vindy.com