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Judge in Oakhill case requiring prosecutors to testify about tapes
CLEVELAND
The judge overseeing the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case sided with defense attorneys who want the case’s lead prosecutor, and three special prosecutors in the prior Oakhill matter to testify at a hearing about secretly recorded tapes.
Also, Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court ruled Tuesday that defense attorneys could issue a subpoena to a confidential witness compelling him to testify at that Oct. 16 hearing without revealing his identity.
Dan Kasaris, the Oakhill case’s lead prosecutor and an Ohio attorney general, had objected to a defense request to subpoena a key confidential witness in a filing last week, calling it “simply a ruse to destroy the identity” of the informant.
Dan Tierney, an AG spokesman, said Tuesday, “We’ll abide by the court’s ruling. These rulings mean we will be able to move ahead so there is no further delay in the trial. It’s in the public’s interest to start the trial so [they are] aware of the actions taken by these public officials.”
Prosecutors have expressed concern about the safety of the confidential witness who is saying he was threatened while walking at Southern Park Mall in Boardman on May 7, 2014, and a few weeks later, a large plastic novelty rat was left at his home.
Without providing details Tuesday, Tierney said there’s been “at least one additional threat against that confidential witness in the past two weeks.”
Attorneys for two of the defendants – Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino – requested the judge allow the subpoena be issued, without revealing the witness’ identity.
The attorneys want to ask the confidential witness what he knows about the amount of secretly recorded tapes he made related to this case.
The defense attorneys – Lynn Maro for McNally and John B. Juhasz for Sciortino – argue there are 2,000 hours of secretly recorded tapes by at least two confidential witnesses.
That’s based on statements made by special prosecutors in the first Oakhill case in 2010. That case was dismissed in July 2011 because federal authorities in possession of secret tapes made by informants of at least one defendant wouldn’t give them to special prosecutors.
Since then, the feds gave the tapes to state prosecutors.
But the amount of recordings remains in question.
The defense says based on past statements there are 2,000 hours of such tapes. Prosecutors say the 2,000 hours was an “off-the-cuff” estimate and the actual amount is about 700 hours.
Maro and Juhasz, who couldn’t be reached Tuesday by The Vindicator to comment, subpoenaed Kasaris, two FBI agents, and the three special prosecutors in the first Oakhill case: Paul M. Nick, executive director of the Ohio Ethics Commission; David P. Muhek, an assistant Lorain County prosecutor; and Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will.
In a Tuesday ruling, Judge Burnside wrote that the motion by prosecutors to quash the subpoenas was denied.
The defendants have the right to ask the prosecutors questions about “prior representations” they made about “the number and extent of taped recordings” at the hearing, the judge wrote.
Prosecutors had said the two FBI agents were going to testify, and that would be enough to clarify the tape issue.
A hearing on the matter was to be Monday, but postponed because of the death of Juhasz’s mother.
The judge initially rescheduled the hearing for Oct. 13, but in a Tuesday ruling moved it to Oct. 16.
McNally and Sciortino, both Democrats, along with attorney Martin Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent candidate for Mahoning County prosecutor, were indicted in March 2014 on 83 total criminal counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, bribery, conspiracy, perjury and money laundering.
They’ve pleaded not guilty.
Prosecutors contend the three were part of a criminal enterprise to impede or stop the relocation of a county agency from a building owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary to Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center, owned by the county.