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Prosecutors in Oakhill criminal conspiracy case don’t object to defendants’ request for more time
CLEVELAND
Prosecutors don’t object to a motion from attorneys for two defendants in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal conspiracy case for more time to prepare arguments about the trial’s location — particularly because there is more evidence to be provided.
The attorneys for Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and Mahoning County Michael V. Sciortino, both Democrats, wrote in identical motions filed Nov. 29 and Dec. 1 with Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court that they hadn’t had adequate time to review 354 secret recordings, most an hour or two long, that prosecutors plan to use as evidence.
The defense wants 60 days to review the evidence from the time all of the tapes and documents from prosecutors are given to them to determine if that will help them decide if they will file a motion seeking to move the case from Cuyahoga County.
In a response, prosecutors said they didn’t oppose the request.
“There is a mountain of evidence in this case against these defendants and/or the criminal enterprise of which they were allegedly a part of,” wrote Dan Kasaris, senior assistant Ohio attorney general who is leading the prosecution in the Oakhill case, in a court document provided Tuesday by the Cuyahoga County clerk of courts.
Kasaris added: “State agents are currently working on an evidence notice,” a list of other evidence besides the secretly-recorded tapes prosecutors may use in this case. That listing is more than 100 pages long.
Also, prosecutors are working on a witness list, he wrote.
Kasaris wrote that state law-enforcement agents are still analyzing evidence from three computers and more than 500 data-storage devices seized from Sciortino’s Austintown home on Sept. 23.
Prosecutors “expect to supplement discovery as soon as possible,” and agents “have narrowed the process to storage devices,” Kasaris wrote.
In their most recent motion, the defense attorneys wrote that more than 100,000 documents have been provided, including 30,000 that were not part of the first Oakhill indictment dismissed in July 2011 because of tapes in the possession of the federal government not available to prosecutors in that case.
Dec. 1 was the original deadline to submit objections to the trial’s location and a new deadline has not been determined.
Defense attorneys contend the case should be heard in Mahoning County. Most of the 83 criminal counts in the May 14 indictment allegedly occurred in Mahoning County, though there are some that allegedly happened in Cuyahoga County.
Mark Lavelle, attorney for Martin Yavorcik, the other defendant in this case, didn’t file an objection to the location of the case.
Yavorcik, a failed 2008 Mahoning County prosecutor candidate who ran as an independent, along with Sciortino and McNally, when he was a county commissioner, are accused of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, conspiracy, bribery, perjury, money laundering and tampering with records.
The three have pleaded not guilty.
The indictment accuses the three along with others of being part of a criminal enterprise that conspired to keep the Mahoning County Job and Family Services office at Garland Plaza, owned by the Cafaro Co., on Youngstown’s East Side.
McNally voted no when the two other county commissioners approved the relocation of JFS in May 2006 to Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center. Sciortino, in his capacity as county auditor, refused to issue a check for the former hospital’s purchase.
The indictment accuses McNally and Sciortino of receiving benefits for opposing the relocation.
Yavorcik is accused of accepting money from “Businessman 1,” an unindicted co-conspirator in the indictment believed to be Anthony Cafaro Sr., former president of the Cafaro Co., in exchange for agreeing not to investigate or prosecute members of the enterprise if elected prosecutor.