Court stays suspension of Hanni’s law license

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Atty. Heidi Hanni

Staff report

COLUMBUS

The Ohio Supreme Court has issued Atty. Heidi A. Hanni of Boardman a six-month suspension of her law license but stayed the entire suspension.

The suspension, announced Thursday, was based on complaints by the Mahoning County Bar Association that she failed to zealously represent a man who wanted to withdraw his guilty plea and made unfounded accusations against county Prosecutor Paul J. Gains’ office on a radio show.

Hanni collected $2,500 from the man who wanted to withdraw his guilty plea to an aggravated vehicular-homicide charge, but she failed to make any oral or written motions on the court record for him to do that, thereby failing to preserve the issue for a potential appeal, the association said.

The judge refused to let the man withdraw his plea and sentenced him to four years in prison. Hanni has since refunded the man’s money.

The other complaint pertained to Hanni’s comments on the Louie Free radio program, while she was unsuccessfully challenging Gains in the 2008 Democratic primary.

The bar association said she made an unsubstantiated implication that Gains’ office was racist and engaged in case-fixing in another motor-vehicle fatality case and an unsubstantiated claim that the prosecutor’s office concealed evidence favorable to a felonious-assault defendant.

Hanni has apologized for her comments on the radio program, saying she made them “in poor taste” during a “heated political campaign.”