Cronin should neither ask for nor receive favors from court

Maureen Cronin built a 30-year reputation as a tough city prosecutor and a no-nonsense common pleas court judge. It is understandable that she is not eager to see a second embarrassing chapter in her arrests for drunken driving broadcast in her hometown.

And it is not all that surprising that the first impulse of a county court judge would be to help shield a former judge from such embarrassment.

But the video from a dashboard camera in the cruiser of the Ohio State Highway Patrol trooper who stopped Cronin on Wednesday night on state Route 11 is a public record.

Who knows what Cronin is shown doing on the video? At this time, only the arresting trooper and Cronin. But the public has an obvious interest in seeing the video without undue delay.

Quick action

Cronin’s lawyer, Scott R. Cochran, took a pre-emptive swipe at Ohio’s public records law by asking Judge Scott D. Hunter, assigned to Mahoning County Area Court in Canfield, to bar release of the video. The Vindicator is challenging that action.

Cochran says he needs two weeks to put together his argument for maintaining the ban. Further, he says that the video should never be viewed unless it is used in a hearing or at trial.

In other words, if a public record isn’t admitted into evidence in a criminal proceeding, it isn’t public. That’s a contention that has no basis in Ohio law and one that is an affront to an open society.

Judge Cronin is a public figure. Over the years, she has been the recipient of public attention that has been largely flattering, occasionally not so. As an elected official, she chose to open herself to public scrutiny. As a retired judge who had expressed an interest in continuing to function as a visiting judge, she remains in the public eye.

Doing the right thing

The first time she was arrested for drunken driving in April 2005, Cronin was a sitting judge and did the right thing. Once she had been arrested, she asked for no favors and was given none. She pleaded no contest, was found guilty and was sentenced to three days in jail and 12 months of nonreporting probation. Like all first-time offenders, she had the option of attending a driver's intervention program instead of going to jail.

The videotape of that arrest was released by the OSHP as a routine matter.

If Cronin has the same respect for the law that she exhibited throughout her career, that’s exactly what should happen this time.

“I made a mistake. I shouldn't have been driving,” Cronin said after her arrest two years ago. “I will plead guilty and move on.”

Once is a mistake. Twice is something more. But just as Cronin knows what’s on the videotape, knows what she was doing before she was pulled over for weaving out of her lane and knows why she refused to take a sobriety test or submit to a blood alcohol test, she knows what she should do.

Setting a high standard

Only a few months after her first arrest, Judge Cronin sentenced a habitual drunken driver to six years in prison. She rejected a plea agreement that the prosecutor and defense attorney had worked out to allow the man, facing his seventh DUI charge, to serve only two years. She not only sentenced him to the maximum, she told him why she was doing so, because otherwise he was “going to kill someone.”

A former judge cannot pretend that one habitual drunken driver is any more or less likely than another to kill someone eventually.

And just as the records were open on all the criminals she prosecuted or sentenced during her career, the records — including video — should be open in her case. The public’s confidence in an impartial court system demands nothing less.