Gains says assistant prosecutors maintain practices on own time

It's up to the Legislature to make judges full time, a prosecutor says.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains says his full-time assistant prosecutors who maintain a private practice do so on weekends.
A review of the phone book and Mahoning County Bar Association directory by The Vindicator shows that many of Gains' full-time assistants maintain private offices. The list includes Nicholas E. Modarelli, chief assistant.
Robert Duffrin, who prosecutes cases for drug task forces, is also the law director for Louisville, a city east of Canton, the newspaper verified Monday. Gains said the job requires three or four days of Duffrin's time each month.
Gains said the prosecutors who maintain a private practice do no criminal work and, because of their demands as prosecutors, do little private work. He pointed out that his staff is short three prosecutors.
Gains' comments came Monday in response to a resolution issued by the Mahoning Valley Chiefs of Police Association which calls for sweeping changes in the criminal justice system.
The chiefs are advocating, among other things, more days of operation for part-time municipal and county courts in Mahoning County and they object to part-time judges and prosecutors maintaining private practices.
Comparison
Gains said his assistants' maintaining private practices is no different than police who work side jobs.
"Their private practice does not interfere with what they do here," Gains said.
Gains said prosecutors and judges assigned to the four county courts in Boardman, Austintown, Canfield and Sebring are not considered full time. Nearly all part-time judges, records show, maintain a private practice.
Gains said only the Legislature can make judges full time and, if that happens, then he would need full-time prosecutors in the county courts.
The county courts typically meet only two days each week, which the chiefs' association said results in too many cases scheduled on those days and, as a result, more plea bargains than trials.
The chiefs said citizens and businesses are repeatedly victimized by a cadre of lifelong, predatory street criminals who slip through the system on a seemingly endless series of reduced charges and plea-bargained sentences until they finally kill a citizen or police officer.
Gains acknowledged that the jammed county court dockets show the need for full-time operation. He said he has sent Modarelli, for example, to help out at Boardman court.
Boardman Judge Joseph M. Houser, the county courts' presiding judge, could not be reached.
Gains said Austintown court, for example, gets 450 to 500 innocent pleas each month, an indicator of how many cases have been filed.
What's next
The chiefs, when they meet again, will establish minimum acceptable sentences. They will reject plea bargains that don't meet the minimum, said Beaver Police Chief Carl N. Frost, chiefs' association chairman and spokesman. Gains said plea agreements have not been entered into without input of police.
The prosecutor said he agrees with a lot of the changes the chiefs advocate, such as tax reforms to ensure adequate funding for law enforcement, the need for a forensic pathologist in Mahoning County and the expansion of drug, alcohol and mental health treatment resources.