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Yavorcik repeats: Oakhill prosecutors didn’t follow law
CLEVELAND
The attorney for Martin Yavorcik, one of the three defendants in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal conspiracy case, filed a court document contending prosecutors didn’t follow state law when charging his client with 17 felony counts of tampering with records.
The court filing from Mark Lavelle, Yavorcik’s attorney, was in response to the prosecutors’ legal brief disputing a previous motion from Lavelle asking that the indictment against his client be dismissed using the same argument of not following the law.
In Wednesday’s filing, which appeared on the Cuyahoga County Clerk of Court’s website Thursday, Lavelle repeated his contention that the Ohio Elections Commission has “exclusive initial jurisdiction of alleged election law violations.”
In the prosecutors’ response, they wrote that Lavelle’s argument is factually wrong and included an affidavit from Philip C. Richter, OEC’s executive director and staff attorney, that states prosecutors weren’t required to present any of the allegations against Yavorcik to his commission.
Lavelle wrote in the latest filing that Richter’s opinion “is irrelevant and has no basis in law and should be stricken from the record.”
Yavorcik, a failed independent candidate for Mahoning County prosecutor in 2008, Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally in his previous post as county commissioner, and county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino — the latter two are Democrats — face 83 criminal counts accusing them of being involved in a conspiracy with others to impede and 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.
The charges include engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, perjury, conspiracy, money laundering and tampering with records. The three have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
The pretrial hearing scheduled for today has been postponed.