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Court accepts law resignation from former judge
By PETER H. MILLIKEN
YOUNGSTOWN
The Ohio Supreme Court has accepted the resignation of Maureen A. Cronin, a former Mahoning County Common Pleas Court judge, from the practice of law in Ohio.
Making the announcement Wednesday, the Ohio Supreme Court, which had suspended Cronin’s law license in April, said it was accepting her resignation with disciplinary action pending.
It said the disciplinary report, however, had been filed under seal by the top court’s disciplinary counsel and that her case is disposed.
Chris Davey, a court spokesman, said Cronin’s resignation ends the disciplinary proceedings against her.
He said the top court’s rules, however, require that all disciplinary-counsel reports concerning lawyers and judges be sealed when they resign with discipline pending. Davey also said that report, which concerns whether the high court should accept the resignation, is sealed because it may contain confidential law-enforcement investigatory information.
Cronin, 57, of Canfield Road, Youngstown, signed her affidavit of resignation March 6, just 21/2 weeks before she entered prison March 24 at the Federal Correctional Institution in Greenville, Ill. Cronin’s scheduled release date from prison is March 8, 2012.
The affidavit of resignation, notarized by her lawyer, J. Gerald Ingram, wasn’t filed at the top court until July 16. In the affidavit, Cronin, who retired from the bench in July 2007, said she was not admitted to law practice in another jurisdiction.
U.S. District Judge Sara Lioi in Akron sentenced Cronin to prison after she pleaded guilty to two felony counts of honest services mail fraud.
In pleading guilty, Cronin admitted accepting and failing to report in summer 2006 an $18,000, no-interest cash loan from Flora Cafaro, part owner of the Cafaro Co., which had numerous civil lawsuits before her while she was a judge.
Flora Cafaro wasn’t charged in the Cronin case.
Although the disciplinary counsel’s report concerning Cronin is sealed, the formal complaint lodged with the top court’s Board of Commissioners on Grievances and Discipline, which contains the disciplinary charges against the former judge, is not under seal.
That report, prepared by Robert R. Berger, senior assistant disciplinary counsel, says Cronin violated the state’s code of judicial conduct and rules of professional conduct for lawyers by taking the money from Cafaro, not reporting it and not recusing herself from Cafaro Co. cases.