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Defense continues studying evidence
By Elise Franco
Youngstown
The defense for Scott and Linda Adair may have to wade through boxes of evidence before the embezzlement case goes to trial.
The Canfield couple appeared Wednesday for a pretrial hearing in front of Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
Scott Adair, 50, and his wife Linda, 52, are accused of embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from former employer South-wind Trucking Inc. of Austintown between March 1, 2004, and Oct. 31, 2007.
The case was reassigned to Judge D’Apolito’s court in April after Judge R. Scott Krichbaum withdrew from the case.
Judge D’Apolito said it would be unfair to ask the defense to go to trial immediately, but he doesn’t intend to drag the case out for months.
“We have to have a reasonable time period to have this case ready to go,” he said. “If you have to put other cases on hold ... do what you have to. I’m not going to be able to wait while you practice other matters.”
Defense attorney Damian Billak told the judge he would need a minimum of 120 days from Wednesday before he’d be ready for trial.
“The state did provide 11,000 or 12,000 pages of documents that we’ll continue to go through,” he said.
Kenneth Cardinal, an assistant county prosecutor, said he is ready for trial now.
Cardinal said he will work to authenticate as many of the documents as possible before the trial begins. Having those records authenticated will save about two weeks worth of testimony during the trial, he said.
“We’re dealing with a massive amount of [alleged] fraud, checks and purchases with that fraudulent money,” he said. “Each of those documents has an author, so if we can stipulate that those are bank records ... we won’t have to bring someone in to authenticate them all during trial.”
A second pretrial hearing is scheduled for July 1. Judge D’Apolito said he then will determine how much more time the defense needs and set a trial date.