Tuesday, December 23, 2014
CLEVELAND
The Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal conspiracy case still has no trial date set, but Judge Janet R. Burnside, of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is presiding over it, has set a March 2 deadline for the filing of a defense motion to move the trial to Youngstown.
Attorneys for defendants John A. McNally, Youngstown mayor and a former Mahoning County commissioner, and county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino want the trial moved to Mahoning, where most of the crimes purportedly occurred.
The lawyer for the third defendant, Atty. Martin Yavorcik, has not objected to the location of the trial. Yavorcik was an unsuccessful candidate for county prosecutor in 2008.
All defendants have pleaded innocent.
The next pre-trial hearing in the case is set for 1:30 p.m. Feb. 9.
The prosecution has not yet filed its witness list, notice of evidence list, and statements of the defendants with the court, but Jill DelGreco, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which is prosecuting the case, said the prosecution will file all its evidence by Jan. 5.
Although the 83-count indictment was filed in May, there are things that still need to occur before the case can be set for trial, including submission of all the prosecution’s evidence to the defense and consideration of the defense motion challenging the Cuyahoga County court’s jurisdiction, Judge Burnside said.
“In no case, small or large, are you going to trial until the case is ready to go to trial,” Judge Burnside said.
“I don’t know enough about the case to really know how long it will take,” to try it from jury selection to verdict, she said, adding that she believes it would be “quite a period of time.”
“In any kind of complicated case, you’re always looking at ways to streamline the case out of deference to the jury,” to avoid having jurors feel overwhelmed, Judge Burnside said.
Among the potential ways to streamline a case are limiting the number of counts in a trial or trying defendants separately, observed Judge Burnside, who has been a judge for 25 years.
The indictment alleges a conspiracy to impede the move of the county’s Department of Job and Family Services from rented quarters owned by the Cafaro Co. on Youngstown’s East Side to Oakhill, which the county bought in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 2006.
JFS moved in 2007 to Oakhill, which is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
McNally and Sciortino opposed the county’s purchase of Oakhil. Sciortino withheld the county’s $75,000 purchase check until a judge ordered him to issue it.
The indictment accuses McNally and Sciortino of receiving benefits for opposing the JFS relocation.
The indictment accuses Yavorcik of accepting money from a businessman, believed to be Anthony Cafaro Sr., former president of the Cafaro Co., in exchange for agreeing not to prosecute members of the alleged conspiracy if he were elected prosecutor.
Anthony Cafaro Sr. and his company are not defendants in the current Oakhill case.
The Oakhill case was initially indicted in 2010 in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court and dismissed the following year because prosecutors could not obtain FBI tapes they needed to share with the defense in the pre-trial evidence exchange, known as discovery.
The case was re-indicted May 14, 2014, in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court in Cleveland.
Prosecutors plan to use 354 secret recordings, most of them an hour or two long, as evidence in the current case.