Judge Kobly must stand firm in her dealings with sheriff

Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul Gains' namby-pamby call for "a little more cooperation" notwithstanding, Youngstown Municipal Court Judge Elizabeth Kobly is absolutely right in demanding that Sheriff Randall Wellington appear before her to explain why he released a prisoner she specifically wanted kept behind bars.
Indeed, Gains, as the county's chief lawyer, should join Judge Kobly in getting to the bottom of this latest snafu -- it isn't the first time that a prisoner has been released through the fault of the sheriff's department -- rather than asking her to dismiss the proceedings against Wellington.
Gains filed a motion late last week that could be summed up thus: No harm, no foul. The prosecutor argued that once the sheriff found out that Ronald A. Tomlin, 19, had been released in error, he ordered deputies to find the man. Tomlin was rearrested and is now in jail.
"It's a mistake and I'd like to see a little more cooperation," the prosecutor said.
Fortunately, the judge wasn't swayed by Gains. She made it clear that Monday's hearing will go on as scheduled.
Who's in charge?
This isn't about the inadvertent violation of Kobly's order, as the prosecutor suggests in his motion for dismissal of the proceedings. It's about a question that is being asked with greater regularity as one incident after another keeps the spotlight trained on the sheriff's department: Who's in charge?
Wellington is a veteran cop who ran for sheriff and won on the strength of his record as the city of Youngstown's police chief. But today, his management of the department raises doubts about his continued effectiveness as the county's chief law enforcement officer.
The excuses he makes for the system's failure -- manpower shortages, federal lawsuits brought by inmates, the ongoing budget crisis -- are no longer persuasive.
Sheriff Wellington needs to publicly explain why bad things continue to happen at the jail. We believe the contempt hearing in Judge Kobly's court is the proper setting for testimony.
The judge wasn't just being difficult when she made it clear in writing that Tomlin was not to be released from jail. He had been convicted of domestic violence and was sentenced to seven days behind bars. As anyone in the criminal justice system will acknowledge, domestic violence cases are high-risk because of all the emotion involved.
If this "mistake" has a familiar ring, it's because such mistakes have been made before, including in February when an inmate described as a career burglar was set free even though he had been placed in jail on a burglary charge while on parole.
How did Wellington explain the system breakdown then?
"I'm surprised this doesn't happen more often the way we're multitasking here," he said. "We're answering calls in the county from here, and we're transporting inmates to county courts. I expect it's going to happen more often in the future as we get into the layoffs."
We wonder whether the sheriff will use that excuse again when he appears before Judge Kobly on Monday.