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Confidential Oakhill witness says novelty rat left at his home
CLEVELAND
Prosecutors in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal corruption case provided details about threats made against a confidential witness — including finding a plastic rat at his home.
The prosecutors also objected to defendants’ attorneys wanting to share confidential information without disclosing who would see it.
In a 15-page filing Tuesday, Christopher Schroeder, an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, wrote that a witness was verbally threatened while walking at Southern Park Mall in Boardman early on May 7, 2014. That’s exactly a week before prosecutors indicted Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally in his capacity as a former Mahoning County commissioner, county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino and attorney Martin Yavorcik.
The three face a combined 83 counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, conspiracy, bribery, perjury, money laundering and tampering with evidence. They’ve pleaded innocent.
McNally, Sciortino and Yavorcik are accused of being part of a group that conspired illegally to impede or stop the move of the Mahoning County Department of Job and Family Services from the Cafaro Co.-owned Garland Plaza to Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health South Side Center.
The witness, whose identity isn’t revealed, told an Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation special agent that a man, who he doesn’t know, approached him and initiated a conversation. The man talked about Anthony Cafaro Sr., the unindicted Businessman 1 in court documents, calling him “a good family man” and saying his family “does a lot of good things for the community.” He also mentioned that the first Oakhill case, dismissed in July 2011, “didn’t work out for some people.”
The man, dressed in business attire, also talked about “informants,” and said, “The worst thing in the world is a snitch. I can stand almost anything in this world but a snitch,” according to the court filing.
The man is described as being white, heavy-set, between 65 and 68 years old, about 5 feet 11 inches tall with thinning dark hair.
After that incident, the witness was relocated from the Youngstown area for several days, the filing states. Upon returning home after the indictment, the witness reported the discovery of a large plastic novelty rat between the storm and front doors of his residence.
The informant has “concern for his well-being in that those responsible obviously know his identity and where he resides,” the motion reads.
The motion doesn’t accuse any of the defendants of being responsible for either incident.
Prosecutors wrote that some documents in this case are labeled “counsel only,” which means they can’t be shared with anyone because of the safety of informants and “the recordings provided in discovery contained unfounded allegations regarding several public officials in Mahoning County.”
After Lynn Maro, McNally’s attorney, raised the issue of the “counsel only” designation in a Sept. 15, 2014, hearing, prosecutors said they weren’t concerned with the defendants seeing the evidence, but “that they not copy it or distribute it to others.”
Maro and John B. Juhasz, Sciortino’s attorney, wrote in a filing last week that prosecutors have never filed anything with the court allowing them to share documents with their clients and that prosecutors were abusing the confidentiality rules. Maro and Juhasz also wrote that not being able to share evidence with witnesses was unnecessarily hampering their defense.
Schroeder wrote in Monday’s motion that the defendants’ attorneys refuse to identify with whom they’d share the documents in order for the court “to determine whether they have a legitimate need for doing so.”
Mark Lavelle, Yavorcik’s attorney, declined to comment, saying he hadn’t read the latest motion.
Juhasz, who shares office space with Maro, also declined to comment.
Also, the defendants’ attorneys want a hearing on what they called the improper overuse of the “counsel only” designation as soon as possible. Ohio criminal court rules state such a hearing can only be conducted seven days before a trial. Prosecutors want Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who’s overseeing this case, to follow court rules.
In last week’s filing, Maro and Juhasz wrote that prosecutors provided The Vindicator with some of the supposed “counsel only” information.
Schroeder wrote that giving the media public documents “is a distortion aimed at creating a distraction.” The allegations “are wrong. The state has not, as defendants imply, released any documents to the media that were not a public record.”
Judge Burnside scheduled the next pretrial hearing on this case for 1:30 p.m. March 20 at the defendants’ request.