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Actions lawful, Wolff tells high court
YOUNGSTOWN
A visiting judge has told the Ohio Supreme Court in Columbus he has the legal authority to keep bills of particulars that provide details of the charges against the defendants in the Oak- hill Renaissance Place criminal-conspiracy case sealed from public view.
“Respondent possesses the authority to exercise judicial power in the manner that it has done,” Judge William H. Wolff Jr. of Kettering said of his court in a filing at the top court.
The judge added that his actions “are lawful and appropriate,” but he did not explain his reasoning for his actions in the filing before the high court.
Through his lawyer, Carley J. Ingram, of the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office, Judge Wolff was responding to a complaint by The Vindicator and 21 WFMJ TV, which are seeking a writ of prohibition to bar him from keeping pretrial documents sealed or closing any court hearings.
Mahoning County commissioners appointed the Montgomery County Prosecutor’s Office to represent Judge Wolff at a cost not to exceed $10,000.
Although he has unsealed many other documents in the case, Judge Wolff has kept the bills of particulars concerning those accused of conspiracy sealed from public view.
Judge Wolff has said he’s keeping the bills sealed because they contain information that may not be admissible in the trial; their release would make selection of an impartial jury in Youngstown unlikely; and the effort to seat an impartial jury should start in Youngstown.
The newspaper and TV station have argued the remedy for concerns about prejudice because of pretrial publicity is to move the criminal trial to another Ohio county.
In the criminal case, Anthony M. Cafaro Sr., former president of the Cafaro Co.; the Cafaro Co. and two of its affiliates; Mahoning County Commissioner John A. McNally IV, county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino; former county Treasurer John B. Reardon; and John Zachariah, former county Job and Family Services director, are charged with conspiring to impede the move of the county’s Department of JFS from Cafaro Co.-owned rented quarters to the county-owned Oak-hill.
Lawyers for the Cafaro defendants have told the state’s high court the bills of particulars “must be kept sealed to protect their fundamental constitutional rights to due process of law and a fair trial before an impartial jury.”
Judge Wolff will preside over the criminal trial, which is set to begin with jury selection June 6 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. A status hearing in the criminal case is set for 1 p.m. March 31.
Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, which the county bought in 2006 and to which JFS moved in 2007.