43
A retired Summit County judge will handle the criminal case against the ex-Mahoning County auditor
YOUNGSTOWN
A retired Summit County Common Pleas Court judge who handled a number of high-profile cases will oversee the 25-felony-count trial involving former Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino.
Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor appointed Patricia A. Cosgrove as the visiting judge in Sciortino’s case. Judge Cosgrove retired in 2011 from the Summit County bench after serving for 18 years, and has served as a visiting judge since.
Sciortino faces 21 counts of unauthorized use of property – computer or telecommunication property – and four counts of theft in office. He’s pleaded not guilty.
In a recent high-profile case, Judge Cosgrove sentenced then-Athens County Sheriff Pat Kelly to seven years in prison in March after he was found guilty a month prior to engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, theft in office and perjury. Prosecutors say Kelly improperly spent public money for years, starting just months after he was sworn into office in 2009.
Judge Cosgrove also oversaw cases between 2013 and this year involving adults related to the August 2012 rape of a 16-year-old girl by two members of the Steubenville High School football team.
She found a volunteer football coach, in whose house the incident occurred, guilty of two misdemeanors, sentenced him to 10 days in jail and then to six months in prison July 13 for a second parole violation; agreed to dismiss charges against the Steubenville school superintendent in exchange for his resignation; and sentenced the school’s technology director to 10 days in jail for obstructing official business.
Sciortino, indicted June 4, will have his first pretrial hearing Thursday.
Prosecutors say Sciortino, a Democrat, and three auditor employees at his direction illegally used the county’s computers and software more than 300 times to raise money for political purposes to keep him in office and for his private law practice between Oct. 6, 2005, and Aug. 29, 2012.
Prosecutors found the supposed misuse of county property by Sciortino as they were collecting evidence in a separate case in Cuyahoga County.
That case accuses Sciortino of being part of a criminal enterprise to illegally, and unsuccessfully, impede or stop the move of the Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services from the Cafaro Co.-owned Garland Plaza to the county-owned Oakhill Renaissance Place.
Others indicted are Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally, a Democrat in his former capacity as a Mahoning County commissioner, and attorney Martin Yavorcik, an unsuccessful 2008 independent county prosecutor candidate.
The three face a total of 83 criminal counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, money laundering, conspiracy and tampering with records. They’ve pleaded not guilty.
A journal entry from Judge Janet Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, based on a pretrial hearing last week, states: “Prosecutor intends to dismiss duplicative counts 26-27 of the indictment.” Both charges accuse Yavorcik of fraud on his 2010 annual campaign finance report.
Also, “prosecutor plans to remove or disregard certain counts to streamline the trial,” the judge’s journal entry reads.
One of the duplicative counts from the 2010 report will be dismissed about a month or two before the trial starts, said Dan Tierney, spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
“We’ll review the indictment for streamlining, but we won’t say for certain when that streamlining will occur,” he said.
Meanwhile, Lynn Maro and John B. Juhasz, attorneys for McNally and Sciortino, respectively, filed two motions seeking the dismissal of all but five of the 56 counts facing their clients.
In one filing, the attorneys are seeking to dismiss six counts of tampering with records against McNally and four against Sciortino. The charges allegedly violate two statutes, which requires under state law for one set of those counts to be dismissed, the attorneys contend.
In the other motion, the attorneys call for the dismissal of 51 of the 56 counts facing McNally and Sciortino, contending the statute of limitations expired May 1, 2011. State law requires no more than 270 days between the day a defendant is in custody for charges and the start of trial if a defendant doesn’t waive his right to a speedy trial.
“The burden now shifts to the government,” Maro and Juhasz wrote. “If it cannot demonstrate that the defendants can still be brought to trial in a timely fashion, then discharge is required.”
Defense attorneys in this case have tried to get charges dismissed before, without success, contending their clients weren’t given speedy trials.
Tierney said prosecutors will file responses to both motions.
But he said Monday that defense attorneys are “misrepresenting facts to the court” such as the argument on the statute of limitations.
“It’s a consistent pattern from the defendants and their counsel,” Tierney said.
The trial is scheduled to start March 1, 2016.
Defense attorneys have declined to move up the trial date “because of scheduling or other reasons,” according to Judge Burnside’s journal entry.
Defense attorneys also declined at the hearing to make a request to have separate trials, but may revisit it “after prosecutor streamlines the case for trial,” the judge wrote.