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Hearing to focus on Hanni conduct
A disciplinary board hearing will be 9:30 a.m. Feb. 22.
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Atty. Heidi Hanni
YOUNGSTOWN — A local lawyer faces a disciplinary hearing on charges that she failed to provide competent, diligent and prompt representation to a man who went to prison for four years for aggravated vehicular homicide.
The disciplinary complaint also says Atty. Heidi Hanni made an unsubstantiated charge that the office of Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains failed to ensure that justice was served in another motor-vehicle fatality case.
The complaint also said Hanni made an unsubstantiated claim that Gains’ office concealed evidence favorable to a felonious-assault defendant, who, Hanni said, was unjustly jailed for 18 months before the prosecution moved for dismissal of the charges.
Hanni made the accusations against Gains on the Louie Free radio program on Jan. 25, 2008, during her unsuccessful Democratic primary effort to unseat Gains, without making the required notification to the legal profession’s disciplinary authorities, the county bar association’s complaint says.
The Ohio Supreme Court’s Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline will conduct a hearing on the complaint at 9:30 a.m. Feb. 22 at the 7th District Court of Appeals, 131 W. Federal St.
After pleading guilty to aggravated vehicular homicide in the July 6, 2004, death of pedestrian Stephen Houchins, 18, of Salem, in a Green Township accident, David Lee Fry, 43, of Washingtonville, switched lawyers and retained Hanni in an attempt to withdraw his plea.
After collecting $2,500 of her $5,000 retainer fee, Hanni, whose office is in Boardman, failed to make a written or oral motion on the court record to withdraw the plea, and thereby failed to preserve the plea withdrawal issue for a potential appeal, according to the bar association.
When Hanni presented the request in chambers just before the sentencing hearing, Judge John M. Durkin of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court declined to let Fry withdraw his plea, but Hanni never made the request in open court during the sentencing hearing, the complaint said.
Fry complained about Hanni to the bar association after he made unsuccessful post-sentencing motions to have his plea and sentence vacated and an unsuccessful appeal to the 7th District Court of Appeals.
In a written filing in response to the bar association complaint, Hanni said she appeared at Fry’s sentencing hearing, even though he had paid her only half her fee, and that none of her conduct in the Fry case violated the state’s lawyer discipline rules. Hanni said she also told Fry just before his sentencing that Judge Durkin had denied his plea withdrawal request. Fry is an inmate at the Trumbull Correctional Institution.
Hanni said her remarks on the radio were made during a “heated political campaign” and were “in poor taste,” according to the bar association complaint.
Gains declined to comment on the disciplinary charges against Hanni. Neither Hanni, nor her lawyer, Matthew C. Giannini, responded to requests for comment.
On the radio program, Hanni said Gains’ office failed to ensure that justice was served when the grand jury declined to indict Jennifer M. Lukach, 31, of Hubbard, on an aggravated vehicular homicide charge in the death of her passenger, Keane Gregory, 29, of Youngstown, in a one-vehicle accident on state Route 11 in Austintown on April 9, 2007.
However, the bar association noted that Lukach told investigators at the accident scene that Gregory had grabbed the steering wheel just before the SUV they occupied swerved and hit a tree, and that Hanni was aware that Lukach had twice passed polygraph exams concerning the accident. Lukach was convicted only of driving while intoxicated.
When the crash occurred, Keane and Lukach were intoxicated and had cocaine in their blood, the bar association said.
The bar association said Hanni made an unsubstantiated implication on the radio program that the prosecutor’s office was racist and engaged in case fixing in this matter, in which Lukach is white and Gregory was black.
Also on the radio, Hanni accused Gains’ office of concealing evidence favorable to Brandon C. Jackson, 26, of Truesdale Avenue, who, she said, was unjustly jailed on charges pertaining to a rolling gunbattle with police on the city’s East Side on July 1, 2005.
Judge James C. Evans, of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, dismissed the charges against Jackson in January 2008, after Gina Buccino Arnaut, an assistant county prosecutor, said she had received evidence that was potentially favorable to Jackson.
The defense lawyer, David Engler, had said he had six witnesses, including a mail carrier, ready to testify that Jackson was elsewhere during the gunbattle.
The bar association complaint said Judge Evans found there was no concealment of evidence favorable to the defense.