Public defender’s effort, storytelling earn him ‘credit for time served’

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Atty. Alan Matavich may be best known outside of the Trumbull County Courthouse as the guy who wrote a couple of humorous songs about local characters whose choices made them infamous.

Like Roger Lee Dillon, whose plot in 2007 to steal $7.4 million from his job with an armored-truck company in Liberty went awry because he left behind a receipt that led authorities to his hiding place.

Or Marc Dann, whose time as Ohio attorney general was cut short by allegations by subordinates that they were sexually harassed by a top aide in 2007 while Dann and the aide were living together in a Dublin condominium.

But to the people who worked with Matavich on a weekly basis for the past two decades in the courtroom of Judge Peter Kontos, he’s better known as an attorney with the Ohio Public Defender’s Office who provides low-income defendants with first-quality legal representation.

“I would hire him for myself if I had a need – for any legal matter; that’s how good he is,” said Judy Byers, bailiff for Judge Kontos.

“I don’t think a lot of the clients realized how lucky they were to have him as their attorney,” agreed Maribeth Leonard, longtime court reporter for Judge Kontos.

Matavich, of Struthers, retired last month after 31 years as an attorney working under contract to the public defender’s office. Most of those years were spent defending low-income clients in criminal cases, while he also carried out a general practice from his home base in Mahoning County. He’s been a lawyer for 40 years.

In keeping with his wit and love of language, the cake the judge provided at Matavich’s going-away party read: “Credit for time served,” which honored his commitment to his job while echoing words commonly heard in a criminal courtroom.

Because Trumbull County has a public defender’s office instead of a system of assigning attorneys from a list as Mahoning County does, Matavich has had the opportunity to work in the same courtroom with the same judge and staff for decades.

Matavich says it’s allowed him to become good at predicting what the judge will do in specific situations.

“I’ve sat in Judge Kontos’ court for all of those years and seen him deal with a variety of cases and a variety of offenses,” Matavich said during a recent interview. “And I kind of have a pretty good idea what he’s going to do.

“Based on that experience, I can tell my clients, ‘If you take this to trial and you’re found guilty, you can expect this.’ If you plead guilty and undergo a presentence report and ask for probation, this is what I’ve seen Judge Kontos do with cases.”

Matavich, who has handled about 100 criminal cases per year in recent years, says Judge Kontos has surprised him before, “but he’s pretty consistent.”

Judge Kontos said he likewise appreciates the consistently high-quality representation Matavich gave clients. The judge called him “as good as any of the defense attorneys who came in to practice in any kind of case” in his courtroom.

Matavich, who is leaving soon for a remote area of North Carolina with his wife, Linda, to read and relax, says his work with the public defender’s office gave him the flexibility he likes.

“The nice thing about being a contractor with the public defender’s office is you can provide legal representation in other cases – civil cases, privately retained criminal cases.”

It also provided him an opportunity to help people.

“I’ve always liked the underdog,” he said. “When you do public-defender work, you represent the underdog. I mean it’s the state of Ohio vs. whoever. And that’s pretty rewarding.”

Some people may view attorneys with government-funded public defender’s offices as less motivated than privately retained attorneys. But Matavich “won a lot of cases,” Leonard said, and “took them all seriously,” Byers added.

“With the public defender’s office, someone with no money can get a first-class defense,” Matavich said.

Among the cases that bring him good memories is one in which a young Newton Falls day-care worker was charged with murder, felonious assault and child endangering after an infant in her care died of abusive head trauma at Akron Children’s Hospital, where he was taken after being found not breathing in 2011.

“In reviewing the ... medical reports that were provided by the prosecutor, when the autopsy was done on the child, it showed that there were several old fractures present in the child’s body,” Matavich remembers.

So he called Dr. Cyril H. Wecht of Pittsburgh, one of the best-known forensic pathologists in the country. “And I actually got to speak to him, and I asked him if he would be interested in looking at this case, and he said yes,” Matavich said.

“The case ultimately got dismissed against the day-care worker without it ever going to trial, and it’s just remarkable to me that a defendant with virtually no resources was able to get that quality of a defense,” Matavich said.

In many cases, though, a defense attorney cannot do much for a client. Then, the best he can do is try to “mitigate the punishment,” he said.

Perhaps it was Matavich’s experiences with defendants that drove his imagination when he heard about Roger Lee Dillon of Youngstown.

Dillon, then 22, succeeded in stealing millions from an armored-truck company where he worked, but he failed to remove a receipt from a pickup truck he and his girlfriend left behind, leading to his arrest with his girlfriend and mother in a remote area of West Virginia several days later. He was released from prison in 2014.

After listening to a talk-radio discussion about Dillon, Matavich employed his love of rhymes and lyrics to pen “Dumb as Dillon,” a song set to music and recorded by two friends, Brenda Rider and Mike Talanca. It became popular on local radio and received mention in stories about Dillon in The Vindicator, Rolling Stone, the New York Times and People magazine.

“Would you be as dumb as Dillon? Would you know where to hide?” the song asks in its opening lines, reflecting the sympathy locals had for Dillon’s plot (www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kQGlPA6eRg). “But just one problem did crop up. He forgot to sweep the car. Receipts, addresses, kin-folk names, the FBI wasn’t too far.”

Matavich’s song-writing career never paid his bills, but his sense of humor has continued to entertain the people with whom he’s worked.

“I really enjoyed his humor, his quick wit in the courtroom. And his stories. And most of all, he did a great job,” Leonard said.