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Oakhill prosecutors: Case shouldn’t be dismissed
oakhill
CLEVELAND
Prosecutors in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case say a judge shouldn’t dismiss the matter as requested by attorneys for two of the defendants who contend not all of the relevant secretly recorded tapes have been turned over to them.
The attorneys for Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, both Democrats, asked Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court to dismiss the case against their clients because prosecutors have failed to disclose about 2,000 hours of the recordings.
In response, Adam M. Chaloupka, an assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor, wrote the judge in a filing that 2,000 hours of recorded statements “do not, and have never, existed.”
Prosecutors in the case from the Ohio attorney general and Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office have said there are 700 to 800 hours of tapes and all have been given to the attorneys for McNally, Sciortino and attorney Martin Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent candidate for Mahoning County prosecutor and the other defendant in the Oakhill case.
At an Oct. 16 hearing, prosecutors said the FBI found 12 additional secretly taped recordings made by a confidential witness – identified at that hearing as Harry Strabala, a Youngstown political consultant – and that he used two tape recorders at the same time so prosecutors would provide that second set of tapes to the defense.
The dispute arose from a previous Oakhill case dismissed in July 2011 because FBI agents had tapes related to the matter and wouldn’t turn them over to prosecutors. Without that evidence, prosecutors couldn’t go forward with the case.
At the time, David Muhek, an assistant Lorain County prosecutor and a special prosecutor in the first Oakhill case, said he estimated the number of hours of tapes at 2,000 after talking with federal law enforcement.
In the latest filing, Chaloupka wrote that an “honest mistake [by] a prior special prosecutor years ago” led “to the false inflation in the hours of FBI recordings related to the investigation of this case.”
All the “relevant and required evidence” has been given to the defense, Chaloupka wrote.
But if the judge determines the complaints are legitimate, he wrote the case shouldn’t be dismissed.
“Possibly more time for the defense to prepare for trial, if it can be justified, is the appropriate remedy,” Chaloupka wrote.
If the attorneys for McNally – who, prosecutors say, isn’t on any of the tapes – and Sciortino believe the recordings are being withheld there’s nothing prohibiting them from requesting them from the FBI, Chaloupka wrote.
The defense motion “is no more than a charade and fishing expedition to delay or prevent a trial on March 1, 2016,” from starting, he wrote.
McNally, Sciortino and Yavorcik are accused of being part of a criminal enterprise that illegally tried to impede or stop the move of a Mahoning County agency from a plaza owned by a subsidiary of the Cafaro Co. to Oak- hill, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center owned by the county. The Cafaro subsidiary received $440,000 a year in rent from the county.
The three have pleaded not guilty to the 83 total counts, including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, conspiracy, perjury and money laundering.