43
Judge: No delays in Adair embezzlement trial start
By Elise Franco
By Elise Franco
YOUNGSTOWN
Photo
Scott Adair
Photo
Linda Adair
Scott and Linda Adair stood quietly at the front of the courtroom while the attorneys quibbled over case details.
Adair, 50, and his wife, 52, are accused of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from former employer Southwind Trucking Inc. of Austintown between March 1, 2004, and Oct. 31, 2007.
The couple appeared Thursday with their attorney, Damian Billak, for a pretrial hearing before Judge R. Scott Kirchbaum of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. Billak and Prosecutor Kenneth Cardinal addressed the judge and went over issues they had with the case.
The judge told them not to hesitate: “We’re going forward, and there won’t be delays,” he said of the trial scheduled for April 26.
Cardinal said the prosecution turned over its information to the defense by order of Judge Krichbaum’s court. He said eight boxes of documents, including witness interview summaries, were copied and provided.
“The state has complied with all orders of the court and will continue to investigate the case and provide evidence,” he said.
Billak, however, wasn’t convinced that he had all of the evidence available to him. He said statements were provided from only two people on a witness list of more than a dozen.
“The detective has interviewed, over 10 months, dozens of individuals, several who have given her information that we haven’t been given,” he said.
Cardinal said all interviews were voice-recorded and later summarized in writing and given to Billak with the rest of the discovery. Detective Sgt. Kathy Dina said after court that Billak found the documents in question.
Judge Krichbaum reminded both attorneys that his order must be followed.
“I’m not going to play any games here where we’re looking for some semantic difference in what’s been discovered,” he said. “I don’t care if there’s eight boxes, a thimble full or 16 football fields” of discovery.
The judge, who is known for moving cases quickly through his courtroom, said he expects the trial to last no more than a week.
Billak said he was worried that with so much discovery, four weeks to prepare for trial might not be enough.
“We have more than 11,000 pages of documents that have been provided to me over the past 20 days,” he said.
Judge Krichbaum reiterated that he won’t tolerate delays.
He said any issues must be brought to the court’s attention before the final pre-trial hearing scheduled for April 22.
“I think you have to review all of that information in a short period of time,” he said. “You should get on it.”