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Yavorcik tells judge FBI said statements would not be used as evidence
CLEVELAND
Martin Yavorcik, a defendant in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case, asked a judge to dismiss charges against him that he contends are based on information he gave law enforcement.
In his first motion acting as his own attorney, Yavorcik wrote that prosecutors shouldn’t be permitted to use anything from those three interviews with the FBI and Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will, a special prosecutor in the first Oak-hill trial, because he was told they wouldn’t use any statements made by him in those meetings as evidence.
That protection wasn’t for “untruthful statements or ‘derivative’ information obtained during the course of the investigation,” Yavorcik wrote in the motion.
The interviews were conducted March 10 and Dec. 4, 2010, and Feb. 5, 2011. The first Oakhill trial in Mahoning County went from July 2010 to July 2011, when it was dismissed with the ability to indict again. He along with Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino were indicted again May 14, 2014, in Cuyahoga County.
“Most of the evidence which defendant believes the state will try to offer in this trial came directly from defendant and was obtained under the terms” of being inadmissible, Yavorcik wrote.
If Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is overseeing the trial, won’t dismiss the charges, Yavorcik asked for a hearing.
That hearing, he wrote, would require prosecutors to prove “that none of the evidence it presented to the grand jury or that it proposes to introduce at trial was derived through the direct or indirect use of Mr. Yavorcik’s immunized statements.”
Dan Tierney, spokesman for the attorney general, which is prosecuting the case with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, said the information from those meetings isn’t being used against Yavorcik.
Secret recordings made during Yavorcik’s failed 2008 independent Mahoning County prosecutor’s race “are the basis of the case” against him, Tierney said.
“Look at the bill of particulars,” which lists evidence prosecutors will use against Yavorcik and the two other Oakhill defendants, Tierney said. “They’re largely based on the recordings and not on his” statements to the FBI and Will.
Yavorcik’s attorney Mark Lavelle filed a motion last week asking the judge to let his client defend himself. Yavorcik, an attorney, signed an affidavit that states he’s reviewed all of the evidence and is able to defend himself. He also wrote he is ready to begin on the Feb. 29 start date for the trial.
Because Judge Burnside hasn’t ruled on the request, Yavorcik’s Monday filing was submitted by Lavelle.
The indictment accuses Yavorcik along with McNally in his former capacity as a Mahoning County commissioner and Sciortino, both Democrats, are part of a criminal enterprise that conspired to stop or impede the relocation of a county agency from a building owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary to Oakhill, the former Forum Health Southside Hospital owned by the county.
The three have pleaded not guilty to 53 total counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, conspiracy, bribery, perjury, money laundering and tampering with records.
Also late Monday, prosecutors filed a motion stating the three defendants haven’t provided them with a complete list of exhibits and evidence they intend to use during the trial.
Because of that “it is impossible to lodge specific objections at this time,” wrote Adam M. Chaloupka, a Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor. “However, through pretrial discussions and discovery, the state believes it is likely that one, two or all defendants may seek to introduce irrelevant and inflammatory evidence. This court should deny any attempt to introduce evidence that clearly violates Ohio law.”
The prosecutors’ filing, Tierney said, was because Monday was the deadline to submit such a request.