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Judge rules Yavorcik can serve as own attorney
Trial on schedule to begin Feb. 29
CLEVELAND
A judge ruled that Martin Yavorcik can serve as his own attorney in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case, but he can’t compare himself to Jesus Christ during the trial.
During a Friday hearing in front of Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is overseeing the trial, Yavorcik said that if “Jesus can defend himself in three trials, I’d be in good company,” according to Joseph F. Frolik, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman. The office is prosecuting the case with the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.
Jesus actually had six trials – three religious trials and three Roman civil trials.
Assistant county Prosecutor Matthew E. Meyer objected to Yavorcik, an Oakhill defendant, comparing himself to Jesus during the trial, and Judge Burnside agreed he couldn’t do so.
Attempts Friday by The Vindicator to contact Yavorcik were unsuccessful.
Judge Burnside said Friday that the trial is on schedule to start Feb. 29.
In a Feb. 4 filing, Mark Lavelle, Yavorcik’s attorney, asked Judge Burnside to honor his client’s request to have him removed as counsel and have the defendant, an attorney since 1999, defend himself.
Since then, Yavorcik filed three motions in the case submitted by Lavelle.
Judge Burnside ruled Thursday to remove from the docket two motions filed by Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent candidate for Mahoning County prosecutor, because she hadn’t ruled on his request. Yavorcik filed a third motion Thursday that, like the two others, will have to be refiled.
Yavorcik previously had removed Jennifer J. Scott and William L. Summers of Cleveland as his attorneys in October 2014, five months after his indictment.
An indictment accuses Yavorcik, along with Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally in his former capacity as a Mahoning County commissioner, and ex-Mahoning County Commissioner Michael V. Sciortino, both Democrats, of being part of a criminal enterprise.
The enterprise is accused of conspiring to stop or impede the relocation of a county agency from a building owned by the Ohio Valley Mall Co., 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.
Meanwhile, attorneys for Ohio Valley Mall have sought permission from the judge to file a “motion for leave to file under seal” to “protect against the disclosure of confidential and protected information in this case that is subject to various sealed orders issued by other Ohio courts.”
OVM and Anthony Cafaro Sr., the retired head of his family-owned Cafaro Co., have been in several courts – including the Ohio Supreme Court and two courts of appeals – seeking to keep grand jury proceedings related to the Oakhill case sealed.
“OVM’s intervention is necessitated by the recent issuance of trial subpoenas to several of OVM’s outside and in-house counsel by both the state and the defendants in this matter,” wrote attorneys Ralph E. Cascarilla and John F. McCaffrey. “The potential that OVM’s attorneys may testify in this matter implicates these privileges, and the need for this court to preserve OVM’s right to an effective and meaningful appeal in related proceedings.”