INMATE ABUSE CASE After split verdict, Budd wants new trial

The ex-deputy who faces a new trial on three counts wants all four retried.
YOUNGSTOWN -- If the menu says fries "and" a drink are available with burgers, can that also mean fries "or" a drink?
In essence, that's the language construction argument attorneys for ex-Mahoning County Deputy Sheriff Michael Budd are making in a Cleveland federal court in his inmate abuse case.
The attorneys say it was wrong for U.S. District Judge Lesley Brooks Wells to allow a jury to find him guilty of one prong of a two-prong count. The lawyers want a new trial on that count.
The jury believed that Budd covered up his link to an inmate beating but couldn't decide on the second prong that alleged he conspired with deputies to beat the inmate in December 2001.
Youngstown attorney Martin F. Yavorcik and Poland attorney Sebastian Rucci, in a 21-page motion filed Monday in Cleveland federal court, said the first count in Budd's indictment states he conspired to violate the inmate's civil rights "and" obstructed justice. The judge told jurors they could reach a verdict on both elements or reach a split verdict as long as the verdict was unanimous.
The lawyers said the judge, in effect, amended the indictment with the instruction she gave the jury.
The government's jury instruction, used by the judge, stated that the jury could find a violation by agreeing on at least one of the elements in the charge.
On March 1, the jury that found Budd guilty of part of the first count deadlocked on the three remaining counts. Trial on those charges begins April 5. The three charges allege he ordered the beating of one inmate and personally beat two other inmates.
Possible outcome
If Judge Wells agrees with Budd's lawyers, all four counts will be retried. The government, represented by Steven M. Dettelbach and Kristy Parker, will weigh in before a decision is made.
The 44-year-old Boardman man, demoted to deputy after indictment five months ago, had held the rank of major. He resigned from the sheriff's department March 2.
The obstruction conviction means the jury believed that Budd withheld from the FBI a letter that named him as the supervisor who directed deputies to beat inmate Tawhon Easterly for a second time Dec. 28, 2001, in retaliation for Easterly punching a female guard.
Easterly was beaten twice the same day by deputies. Budd had no involvement in the first retaliatory pummeling.
Budd substituted a false report of the beating that he forced then-Deputy Richard J. Kaschak to write and substituted it for the letter Austintown Police Chief Gordon Ellis wrote about the event and gave to Sheriff Randall A. Wellington.
The chief's letter, based on Kaschak's confession during a job interview, named Budd as the one who ordered the beating; Kaschak's false report omitted Budd's name.