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Oakhill defendant wants judge to prohibit secretly recorded tapes at trial
CLEVELAND
With the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case scheduled to start Feb. 29, the number of filings by defendants to suppress evidence and dismiss charges keeps on growing.
In the latest filing, defendant Martin Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent candidate for Mahoning County prosecutor, wants the case’s judge not to permit any evidence to be used against him that came from recordings of him made secretly by Harry Strabala, a political consultant and FBI informant.
Yavorcik along with attorneys for Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, the two other defendants, have filed more than 20 motions – largely to dismiss the case or not permit certain exhibits and witnesses to be part of the trial – in the past month.
However, Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is overseeing the trial, Thursday removed from the docket two motions filed by Yavorcik, an attorney who wants to defend himself, because they were written by the defendant, and she hasn’t ruled on his request to be his own lawyer.
The judge set a hearing for today to consider that request.
An indictment accuses Yavorcik, along with McNally in his former capacity as a Mahoning County commissioner, and Sciortino, both Democrats, of being 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.
In the Wednesday filing, Yavorcik called Strabala’s taping of an April 2, 2008, strategy meeting at his law office a government “sanctioned illegal infiltration of defendant’s political campaign by their paid confidential informant,” a violation of state and federal laws.
That motion also is likely to be rejected by the judge as Yavorcik wrote it.
“The FBI did not have judicial authorization to enter and/or search Yavorcik’s private law office,” Yavorcik wrote in Wednesday’s motion.
“Additionally, and more disturbing, the FBI allowed and/or encouraged Mr. Strabala to reveal Yavorcik’s confidential planning and strategy information to Yavorcik’s opponent Paul Gains in an effort to affect the outcome of the election,” Yavorcik contends in his motion. “On more than one occasion, the FBI recorded conversations between Harry Strabala and others where Mr. Strabala discussed meeting with Paul Gains and conveying private Yavorcik campaign information to Gains through others and himself.”
The filing is identical to a Nov. 2, 2015, complaint Yavorcik filed with the Ohio Elections Commission.
Gains, the Democratic incumbent prosecutor, beat Yavorcik by 38 percentage points in 2008.
In his response to the commission, Gains wrote that the allegations from Yavorcik are without merit, that he never received any information from Strabala about Yavorcik’s campaign, and that in 2008 he didn’t know Strabala was an FBI informant.
Gains also points out that Judge Burnside restricted the use of the secretly recorded conversations.
Despite that restriction, Yavorcik provided information and dates for some of Strabala’s secretly taped recordings in his Wednesday motion. The information included Stabala telling people that he was in contact with Gains about Yavorcik’s campaign and that Gains had a recording he was going to use against Yavorcik.
Yavorcik also wrote that Strabala gave him his FBI-provided telephone Nov. 3 and 4, 2008, to talk to people. Those conversations were taped by the FBI. Yavorcik contends because neither he nor the people he spoke to agreed to be recorded, the tapings were illegal wiretaps.
Also Wednesday, prosecutors filed a motion seeking to strike five motions from defendants – including one from Yavorcik that the judge has since removed – because they weren’t submitted on a timely basis. If that request is rejected, prosecutors asked for a Tuesday filing deadline for all pretrial motions from the defense.