43
Oakhill judge grants a postponement on filing a change-of-venue challenge
Attorneys have additional month to challenge trial location
CLEVELAND
The judge overseeing the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case agreed to give attorneys for the defendants an additional month to file motions to challenge the trial location in Cuyahoga County.
The original deadline for a change-of-venue challenge was March 2.
But Lynn A. Maro and John B. Juhasz — who represent Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, respectively — asked for an extension March 1 because they are defense attorneys in a federal trial in Cleveland that is taking up their time.
In that March 1 motion, Maro and Juhasz asked for the deadline to be moved to April 3.
Prosecutors didn’t object to the request a few days later.
Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court filed a one-sentence journal entry Tuesday granting the request.
A pretrial hearing in the case is set for March 20. Attorneys on both sides are permitted to participate in those hearings by phone. The judge didn’t address the possibility of postponing the hearing in her latest journal entry.
Mark Lavelle — lawyer for Atty. Martin Yavorcik, who is the third defendant in the Oakhill case — didn’t file anything with the court seeking a delay in arguing if Cuyahoga County is the appropriate venue for this trial. He also didn’t file an objection to having the case there, though Yavorcik’s previous attorney on the matter had said she didn’t believe Cuyahoga County was the proper venue.
The indictment contends most of the purported crimes occurred in Mahoning County, but some supposedly happened in Cuyahoga County.
Prosecutors contend only one element of a single offense is needed to have occurred in Cuyahoga County for it to be the appropriate venue for this case.
McNally and Sciortino, both Democrats, and Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent candidate for Mahoning County prosecutor, are accused of 83 criminal counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, conspiracy, tampering with records, perjury and money laundering. The three have pleaded not guilty to the charges.
A May 14, 2014, indictment accuses them of being part of a criminal enterprise with numerous others.
The enterprise, prosecutors contend, illegally — and unsuccessfully — tried 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 Southside Medical Center.
The enterprise also wanted to get Yavorcik elected prosecutor to make a criminal investigation into the matter go away, prosecutors allege.