Common plea: It's flawed

YOUNGSTOWN — Former Mayor Jay Williams has used the word dysfunction to describe the state of the Mahoning County criminal-justice system.

He’s not the only one who has made that assessment.

“It’s time for fewer plea bargains, more trials, stiffer sentences and more accountability,” Williams said in January, several months after the brutal murder of an elderly South Side resident — the second in less than a year.

The criminal-justice system has come under fire for operating too slowly, causing defendants to stay too long in the county jail, causing the jail to be overcrowded, causing a civil-rights lawsuit that led to reducing the number of inmates.

Prosecutor Paul Gains tried to speed up the system, hiring five assistant prosecutors. This winter,

however, when he tried to give assistant prosecutors a pay raise costing $197,000 to try to keep them from leaving for other jobs, it set off a dispute with county commissioners.

Debate over the raises continues. Furlough of employees in Gains’ office may be necessary if the office’s money runs out by year’s end.

The Ohio Supreme Court reported that Mahoning County Common Pleas Court had the state’s fourth-largest backlog of criminal cases in 2005. At the end of that year, there were 322 criminal cases pending beyond the Ohio Supreme Court’s guideline that criminal cases should be completed within six months. It has since dropped to 209.

For the complete story, read Sunday's Vindicator and Vindy.com