43
Oakhill defendant Yavorcik seeks OK to defend himself
CLEVELAND
Martin Yavorcik, one of the defendants in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case, wants the trial judge to let him defend himself.
In a motion filed Thursday, Mark Lavelle, Yavorcik’s attorney, asked Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is overseeing this trial, to honor his client’s request to have him removed as counsel and have the defendant, an attorney since 1999, defend himself.
In an affidavit attached to the motion, Yavorcik wrote: “I have read and reviewed every part of discovery [evidence] provided by the state of Ohio and am ready, willing, and able to defend myself against each and every allegation made in the amended indictment in this matter. Further, I have been actively involved since [the] date of indictment in the participation of my defense.”
Yavorcik also wrote that he is prepared to begin on the Feb. 29 start date for the trial.
Attempts Thursday by The Vindicator to contact Yavorcik and Lavelle were unsuccessful.
The decision on the request must come from Judge Burnside.
This is the second time Yavorcik has looked to get rid of his attorneys.
In October 2014, five months after the indictment, Judge Burnside honored Yavorcik’s request to have Jennifer J. Scott and William L. Summers of Cleveland removed as his attorneys. He initially said he planned to represent himself and then hired Lavelle, of Boardman.
“We don’t have a comment; it’s up to the judge to honor that request,” said Dan Tierney, spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which is prosecuting the case with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.
Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent candidate for Mahoning County prosecutor, along with Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally in his previous capacity as a Mahoning County commissioner and ex-county Auditor Michael V. Sciortino are accused in a May 14, 2014, indictment of being part of a criminal enterprise.
The enterprise supposedly tried to stop or impede the relocation of a county agency from Garland Plaza, owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary, to Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center owned by the county.
The three face 53 criminal counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, conspiracy, bribery, perjury, money laundering and tampering with records. They’ve pleaded not guilty.
Meanwhile, attorneys for McNally and Sciortino, both Democrats, filed two motions late Wednesday.
One asked Judge Burnside to require prosecutors to provide information about any potential deals made with witnesses. The other asked the judge to sanction prosecutors claiming defense attorneys received additional evidence, almost all of it not new, in just the past few weeks.
“This is not an 11th-hour effort to delay the trial by the defense,” the attorneys wrote. “It is instead an effort to bar the government from using at trial items in the government’s possession for months or years, but which have been withheld until the 23rd hour.”
Tierney said all evidence has been provided to defendants in compliance with court rules.
“It’s just another delay tactic,” he said. “The irony is prosecutors are waiting for the defense to provide relevant discovery.”
Attorneys Lynn Maro and John B. Juhasz, who represent McNally and Sciortino, respectively, wrote that prosecutors didn’t provide more than 2,000 pages of records until Jan. 15, a video made in 2008 by a confidential witness – revealed to be Youngstown political consultant Harry Strabala – until Jan. 26, and additional interview summaries with witnesses until Monday.
“The trial should go forward as scheduled, but the government should be denied the ability to take advantage of its obvious ‘hide the thimble games,’” Maro and Juhasz wrote.
The attorneys asked for Strabala not to be permitted to testify as he wasn’t on the prosecutors two previous witness lists, and the defense was preparing to try the case based on the assumption Strabala wouldn’t testify.
They wrote that prosecutors gave them secretly taped recordings and some documents Jan. 15 that previously had been given to them.
The interview summaries were of ex-Mahoning County Treasurer John Reardon; ex-state Rep. Ronald V. Gerberry; county Commissioner Anthony Traficanti; Andrew Suhar, a bankruptcy trustee; Melissa Macejko, Suhar’s attorney; and Kurt Welsh, a former county board of elections employee.
The interviews were conducted months ago and not turned over until Monday, so the witnesses should be excluded because of “the government’s failure to properly” provide the statements in a timely fashion, Maro and Juhasz wrote.
In that motion, Maro and Juhasz also requested that nine other prosecution witnesses not be permitted to testify.
In the other motion, Maro and Juhasz wrote that prosecutors failed to give them information about any potential deals made with witnesses.
The motion makes the request for all witnesses, but specifically requested it for Stabala, Gerberry, Reardon and Welsh as well as John Zachariah, former Mahoning County Job and Family Services director; Lisa Antonini, former county treasurer and Democratic Party chairwoman; J.J. Cafaro, retired Cafaro Co. executive; and Michael Morley, a former county Democratic Party chairman and board of elections member.
Maro and Juhasz recently filed three other motions seeking to get the indictment dismissed.