Rights of all can be protected through truly public trials

For several months a debate has been waged in Mahoning County over whether the public is entitled to know specifically what two sitting elected officials, a former official, a former county employee and one or more principals in one of the most influential companies in the Mahoning Valley are alleged to have done that resulted in their being indicted on a multitude of criminal charges.

This is not an inconsequential case. It involves questions of public trust at the highest levels of elective office in Mahoning County. It involves leases for office space with the potential to run into millions of dollars.

The center of the controversy is easy enough for anyone with a roof over his or her head to understand: Is it better to buy or rent? It is not surprising that among a group of public officials there would be differing opinions on that question. The problem arises if it turns out that some public officials have been unduly influenced by outside forces and conspired to advocate on behalf of special interests rather than the public interest.

Ultimately, that question will be answered in court months from now (and the final answer regarding legality might be years away, given the potential for appeals).

In the meantime we — meaning we and the press and you readers and viewers in the public — are being told that much of what is happening in the legal arena is none of our business. This would be hard to accept in a run-of-the-mill case; it is intolerable in the case surrounding Oakhill Renaissance Place. Oakhill is the former Southside Hospital, which was converted into a county office complex housing, among other offices, those of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services, which moved there from rented space in a former East Side shopping plaza.

An American tradition

But the rightness or wrongness of a legal proceeding that is being hidden from public view is not determined by the notoriety of the case. We in the United States have not only come to expect our legal system to be open to public scrutiny, we depend on it. And, by their action in filing a motion with the Ohio Supreme Court, The Vindicator and 21WFMJ-TV are demanding access to court documents that have been filed in the Oakhill case and kept under seal by order of Judge William H. Wolff Jr.

Indicted on conspiracy and other charges are Mahoning County Commissioner John A. McNally IV, county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino; former county Treasurer John B. Reardon; former JFS Director John Zachariah; Anthony M. Cafaro Sr., former president of the Cafaro Co.; the Cafaro Co., and two of its affiliates, the Ohio Valley Mall Co. and The Marion Plaza Inc. Charged with money laundering are Flora Cafaro, part-owner of the Cafaro Co., and Atty. Martin Yavorcik, who ran unsuccessfully for county prosecutor.

Attorneys for the defendants have so far had success in arguing that their constitutional right to a fair trial outweighs a constitutional right of the free press to report what should be public information to the public.

But reporting what prosecutors now know about an alleged conspiracy does not deny the defendants their fair trial rights. They have adequate protection under the law.

First, it is the judge’s responsibility to determine during jury selection whether the local jury pool has been tainted by pretrial publicity — either that coming from the press or, in an unusual twist, through ads broadcast on cable TV by some of the defendants. If 12 impartial jurors can be seated in Mahoning County, the trial will go on. If not, the court would be obliged to move the trial to another county, a remedy proscribed by the Ohio Supreme Court in such an event. This case would be more easily moved than most, since the trial judge, virtually all of the defense lawyers and the prosecuting attorneys are out-of-towners.

There is no comparable remedy, however, for the public. The public is being denied — and could be permanently denied — access to information that was compiled with public funds regarding the conduct of public officials who had been sworn to act in the public interest.

The filings should be unsealed and the case allowed to go forward under procedures that are proven to have worked in the past.