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Defense attorneys in Oakhill case: We’re ‘not trying to delay this trial’
YOUNGSTOWN
The attorneys for Youngs-town Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, two of the defendants in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case, accused prosecutors of making incorrect comments to the media about their motives.
In a Friday statement to The Vindicator, Lynn Maro and John B. Juhasz, the attorneys for McNally and Sciortino, respectively, said Dan Tierney, spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office – which is prosecuting this case with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office – “has again made public comments that are not correct.”
“The defense is not trying to delay this trial and the defense has provided discovery to the state,” the two wrote in the statement, the first time they’ve commented to the newspaper since the May 29, 2014, arraignments of their clients.
In response, Tierney said the defense has provided discovery evidence, but none of it is “relevant” to this case.
“Our position has been clear from the beginning: It’s a corruption trial,” Tierney said. “It’s important the trial begin on time.”
Tierney has called various motions filed by the two attorneys “delay tactics.”
The trial is to begin in Cleveland on Feb. 29.
“Mr. McNally and Mr. Sciortino do not want a continuance; they simply want the procedures employed for this trial to be fair,” Maro and Juhasz wrote in the statement.
They also wrote Friday that in the last 90 days, the state provided more than 4,000 pages of records and about 400 computer discs, much of which it has had for more than five years.
“It would indeed appear as though someone is trying to force a continuance. It is not the defense,” Maro and Juhasz wrote.
“Regarding the volume [of evidence] they are complaining about, there were only 12 new recordings,” Tierney said.
Along with attorney Martin Yavorcik, McNally and Sciortino are accused of being part of a conspiracy to stop or impede the relocation of a Mahoning County agency from a building owned by the Cafaro Co. to Oakhill, the former Forum Health Southside Hospital owned by the county.