Pretrial hearing held in Oakhill case

Staff report

CLEVELAND

A pretrial conference took placeMonday in the Oakhill public corruption case.

Judge Janet Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court met with lawyers for defendants John A. McNally, mayor of Youngs-town; Mahoning County Auditor Michael Sciortino; and attorney Martin Yavorcik.

Judge Burnside said there were no new motions filed in the case Monday.

Attorneys and prosecutors for the state attorney general’s office were also present.

Judge Burnside said she and the attorneys went over dates and deadlines for motions to be filed in the case, which includes mounds of documents and more than 500 hours of tape recordings.

All three defendants have pleaded not guilty, and no trial date has been announced.

The case alleges a conspiracy to impede the move of Mahoning County’s Department of Job and Family Services from rented quarters in the then-Cafaro Co.-owned Garland Plaza on the city’s East Side to Oakhill Renaissance Place.

The county bought Oakhill for $75,000 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in 2006 and moved JFS there the following year. Oakhill is the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.

Sciortino withheld the $75,000 check until a judge ordered him to release it in July 2007.

At the time, McNally was a Mahoning County commissioner.

The Oakhill case previously was indicted in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court in 2010 and dismissed the following year because the prosecution was then unable to obtain tapes from the FBI, which it was legally obligated to provide to the defense in discovery.

The Oakhill case was indicted again in Cleveland in May of this year.