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Oakhill defendants will get a Sept. 21 hearing on the supposed withholding of secretly-recorded tapes
CLEVELAND
Defense attorneys in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case who contend prosecutors are withholding about 1,300 hours of secretly recorded tapes will get a court hearing Sept. 21 to resolve the matter.
The date was set by Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is overseeing the case, after a Wednesday pretrial hearing with prosecutors and defense attorneys.
The amount of taped evidence has been a long-standing dispute between the two sides.
Defense attorneys have contended that there are 2,000 hours of secretly recorded tapes while prosecutors say the number is 700 hours, and all of them have been given to the defense.
The first Oakhill case was dismissed in July 2011 at the request of prosecutors because not all evidence could be provided to defendants. Specifically, the evidence was what prosecutors in that case said was “approximately 2,000 hours of tape recordings” in the possession of the FBI, and that agency wouldn’t provide it.
Since then, the FBI gave about 700 hours of recordings to prosecutors, leading to the second indictment on May 14, 2014.
Prosecutors have repeatedly said there are only 700 hours and the 2,000-hour statement was “off the cuff.”
Late last month, prosecutors provided a letter from Deane Hassman, a Youngstown-based FBI special agent, who wrote the bureau gave all the recordings it had to prosecutors who then gave them to defense attorneys.
In the letter, Hassman wrote the 2,000 hours was an incorrect estimate “based upon the knowledge of 10,000-plus telephone sessions and hundreds of face-to-face meetings.”
Dan Tierney, a spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, the lead prosecutor on this case, said Wednesday that we “continue to insist all of the tapes have been turned over to the defendants.”
It will be the first public hearing for this case.
Lynn Maro and John B. Juhasz – the attorneys for two Oakhill defendants, Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, both Democrats – couldn’t be reached Wednesday by The Vindicator to comment. But they wrote in a motion last month that “it seems crystal clear that there are additional recordings, and the defendants are entitled to them.”
Judge Burnside said she ordered the hearing because “the court has no way of knowing” how many hours of tapes exist, and the defense attorneys have the right to cross-examine witnesses.
Prosecutors contend McNally in his previous capacity as a Mahoning County commissioner, Sciortino, and attorney Martin Yavorcik, a failed 2008 Mahoning County prosecutor candidate, were 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 Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, owned by the county.
The enterprise, which included numerous others who aren’t indicted, also wanted to elect Yavorcik prosecutor in 2008 to make a criminal investigation into the matter go away, according to prosecutors.
McNally, Sciortino and Yavorcik face 83 total criminal counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, conspiracy, perjury and money laundering. The three have pleaded not guilty.
Also, Sciortino was indicted June 4 in Mahoning County on 25 felonies accusing him of illegally using government-owned computers and software for his political campaigns and for his private law practice. He’s pleaded not guilty to those charges.
On Wed- nesday, Judge Burnside permitted prosecutors to turn over the rest of its evidence to defense attorneys by Aug. 10. The original deadline was July 1, but prosecutors needed more time.
Prosecutors will provide that evidence in an amended bill of particulars, the judge said. A bill of particulars provides more-detailed information about the charges against defendants than indictments.
Prosecutors will also “fine-tune the evidence” they plan to use in the case, Judge Burnside said.
There’s a large amount of documents and other evidence that will be reduced to what prosecutors will use in the case against the three, and that information will be given to defense attorneys, the judge said.
On June 26, Judge Burnside overruled a motion from McNally’s and Sciortino’s attorneys that Cuyahoga County lacked venue for this case. The two sought to dismiss the case in April contending that Cuyahoga wasn’t the proper venue.
In that decision, Judge Burnside wrote that prosecutors would have to disclose the venue for each count before a jury could be properly instructed.
That still needs to be done by prosecutors, and is expected to be a part of the amended bill of particulars.
The indictment says the purported criminal acts occurred in Cuyahoga, Mahoning, Geauga and Franklin counties.