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Ex-auditor Michael Sciortino trial date is Jan. 11, 2016
YOUNGSTOWN
The judge overseeing the 25-count felony case of ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino set his trial date for Jan. 11, 2016.
Patricia A. Cosgrove, a retired Summit County Common Pleas Court judge, made the decision Thursday in a 10-minute hearing in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
That hearing came after the judge met for about 25 minutes in private with John B. Juhasz, Sciortino’s attorney, and Dan Kasaris, a senior assistant Ohio attorney general and this case’s prosecutor.
Sciortino, a Democrat, was indicted June 4 on 21 counts of unauthorized use of property – computer or telecommunication property – and four counts of theft in office. He’s pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors say Sciortino 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.
Sciortino served as auditor from September 2005 until February 2015, losing the November 2014 election to Republican Ralph Meacham.
In court Thursday, Kasaris said prosecutors gave the defense various evidence including a bill of particulars, an evidence notice, a witness list, witness statements, statements secretly recorded by confidential informants, and numerous documents found on a county computer in Sciortino’s possession.
“There are a lot of documents on his computer, and I felt the right thing to do” was “to narrow what we’re going to use” in the trial against Sciortino, Kasaris said.
Juhasz said it was “generous” for Kasaris to pare down the evidence prosecutors will use against Sciortino, but “the defense will go through all of the discovery material. There are thousands of pages.”
Also, a report from Michael Dodson, a computer forensic analyst for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation, on what was found on the seized county auditor computers will be provided to the defense by Sept. 11, Kasaris said.
That’s also the date Judge Cosgrove set for prosecutors to provide all evidence to the defense.
All motions must be filed by Nov. 2 with a final pretrial hearing Dec. 14 and the trial starting at 9 a.m. Jan. 11.
Judge Cosgrove said she had the discretion to have telephone conversations with attorneys on the case before the case starts to make sure everything is progressing as scheduled.
BCI cyber-crime agents, with a search warrant, removed numerous computers and 676 computer disks Sept. 22, 2014, from Sciortino’s auditor’s office in the county courthouse, the county’s information-technologies department at the administrative building and the county’s computer-network facility at Oakhill Renaissance Place. The agents also seized two county-owned laptops and a computer hard drive from Sciortino at his home.
That search warrant was related to a criminal case against Sciortino as well as Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally, a Democrat in his former capacity as a county commissioner, and attorney Martin Yavorcik, an unsuccessful 2008 independent candidate for county prosecutor.
The three face 83 total criminal counts in that case including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, conspiracy, perjury and money laundering. The three have pleaded not guilty.
That indictment, unsealed May 14, 2014, in Cuyahoga County, accuses them of being part of a criminal enterprise that illegally, and unsuccessfully, tried to impede or stop the move of the county Department of Job and Family Services from the Cafaro Co.-owned Garland Plaza to Oakhill, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center owned by the county.
The trial date for that case is set for March 1, 2016.