Cleveland judge rejects motion to dismiss Oakhill case

CLEVELAND

The judge in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case refused a motion from attorneys for two defendants to dismiss the case over the amount of secretly recorded tapes given to them.

Attorneys for Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and former Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, both Democrats, insist there are 2,000 hours of the tapes. Prosecutors in the case said there are 700 to 800 hours and all are in the hands of the defense attorneys.

In her Thursday ruling, Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is hearing the case, wrote: “There was no evidence that the 2,000 hours figure was the result of calculation, an educated guess or intelligent estimation. The evidence revealed no one ever bothered to count or itemize or even carefully estimate the number of hours.”

There is “no evidence established that use of this figure was intentionally misleading or was anything other than a sloppy characterization that somehow came to have a life [of] its own,” the judge concluded.

For more on the case and reaction to the ruling, read Friday's Vindicator or Vindy.com.