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Judge refuses to let two defendants in Oakhill case inspect grand-jury transcript
YOUNGSTOWN
The judge overseeing the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal conspiracy case denied a request from attorneys for Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, two of the defendants, to inspect the grand-jury transcript.
In a series of journal entries filed Thursday, Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, where the case is being heard, also allowed the Ohio Attorney General’s and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s offices to amend the indictment to correct errors in the original document.
Attorneys for McNally and Sciortino, both Democrats, wanted the grand-jury transcript to ensure the “indictment is truly a product of grand jury presentment.” At issue was whether the mistakes — including mixing up two unidentified Cleveland-based law firms in three criminal counts — were legitimate.
In a one-sentence journal entry, Judge Burnside granted the motion to amend, and in another one-sentence entry, she denied a motion from Sciortino and McNally to oppose the amended indictment.
In a third journal entry, the judge denied allowing McNally and Sciortino to look at the grand-jury transcript, writing: “No particularized need established.”
Lynn Maro, McNally’s attorney, and John Juhasz, Sciortino’s attorney, could not be reached Thursday by The Vindicator to comment on Judge Burnside’s journal entries.
The judge also wrote in a Wednesday journal entry that prosecutors failed to provide a complete list of dates and events needed to determine speedy-trial issues.
Judge Burnside wrote the state’s file “is not acceptable to the court. The notice describes some dates and events that could bear on calculating speedy-trial time, but never provides dates [the defendants] were in custody, which is critical to calculating time, and finally, the state does not provide its actual calculation. It just throws out some dates and gives the total number of days of expired time. The state is ordered to forthwith file a proper, meaningful speedy-trial calculation.”
Like the prosecutors, the judge took to task Jennifer J. Scott, attorney for Martin Yavorcik, the other defendant in this trial, last month when rejecting a motion the attorney filed to dismiss the case over speedy-trial issues. Yavorcik is a failed 2008 independent candidate for county prosecutor.
State law requires no more than 270 days between the day a defendant is in custody for charges and the start of a trial — 90 days if a defendant is in custody. That changes if a defendant waives his right to a speedy trial.
Maro and Juhasz filed a motion last month, writing they would be filing paperwork to dismiss certain counts in the indictment over speedy-trial issues.
The 83-count indictment against the three, who say they are not guilty of any of the charges, accuses them of being involved in a conspiracy to impede the move of the Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services from the then-Cafaro Co.-owned Garland Plaza on Youngstown’s East Side to Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
The indictment charges the three with engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, conspiracy, money laundering and tampering with records with others, who are not indicted. McNally is accused of criminal acts in his former capacity as a county commissioner.
The three defendants were among those indicted in July 2010 in a similar but less-expansive case dismissed a year later because prosecutors then were unable to obtain FBI tapes of at least one defendant that would have had to be shared with the defense in the evidence exchange.
Prosecutors last month gave the three defendants 576 hours of tapes from two confidential sources and summaries of recordings made by a third confidential source.