Court overturns jail sentence for club owner

YOUNGSTOWN -- The 7th District Court of Appeals has overturned a suspended jail sentence given to the former operator of The Mill nightclub in Austintown.
The court ruled Wednesday that Dorothea Wydick, president of Nite Clubs of Ohio Inc., cannot be sentenced to jail or serve probation for pleading no contest to organizational criminal liability for assault. Nite Clubs of Ohio operated The Mill in Wedgewood Plaza on South Raccoon Road until January 2003.
In July 2002, police charged Nite Clubs of Ohio with menacing and two counts of organizational criminal liability for assault as a result of a report that two men were beaten by Mill bouncers. Wydick, as president of the corporation, pleaded no contest to one of the assault charges in Mahoning County Court in Austintown, was found guilty and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine and given six months' probation and a 180-day suspended jail sentence. The other charges were dismissed.
Wydick later appealed the jail sentence.
The appeals court ruled Wednesday that the organizational criminal liability section of the Ohio Revised Code does not allow a judge to sentence the owner of a corporation to jail time or probation.
Nite Clubs of Ohio was evicted from Wedgewood Plaza in 2003 for failing to pay rent.