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Filing takes issue with inclusion of prosecutor addresses on Oakhill defense witness list
CLEVELAND
Attorneys for two defendants in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal- corruption case improperly listed the home addresses of prosecutors in a court motion listing them as witnesses, prosecutors say.
In a Friday filing, Matthew E. Meyer, a Cuyahoga County assistant prosecutor who is working on the Oakhill case, wrote that to list “a prosecutor’s home address during a criminal case” is a fourth-degree misdemeanor.
Attorneys for Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, two of the Oakhill defendants, included the home address of Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul J. Gains and Linette Stratford, the county’s chief assistant prosecutor, among others, in a Feb. 12 document listing 71 defense witnesses and their last known addresses.
The defense attorneys – Lynn Maro for McNally and John B. Juhasz for Sciortino – then filed a motion late Thursday with the addresses of Gains and Stratford blacked out.
During a Friday hearing in front of Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is overseeing the trial, attorneys for both sides agreed to black out the addresses of three other assistant prosecutors on the witness list, though those addresses are on the June 12 and Thursday’s court filings by the defense.
In his Friday motion, Meyer wrote: “Due to the nature of their profession, publicly disclosing the home addresses of assistant prosecutors and prosecuting attorneys subject them to threats, intimidation and violence. Prosecutor Gains still bears the scars of a previous attempt on his life made by criminals intent on killing him” at his home.
“Against this backdrop, there is no justifiable reason for an attorney deliberately placing an assistant prosecutor or prosecuting attorney in harm’s way,” Meyer wrote.
Gains’ home address is listed in telephone books, and The Vindicator routinely includes his address in listings of candidates when they file for election and in candidate profiles.
An indictment accuses attorney Martin Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent Mahoning County prosecutor, 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 Medical Center 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.
The trial is scheduled to start Feb. 29.
In a separate motion filed late Thursday, Maro and Juhasz complained that prosecutors have failed to provide correct addresses for at least eight witnesses they want to call. Also, they wrote, prosecutors have failed to furnish potential criminal records for 16 witnesses.
Besides agreeing to black out the addresses of other assistant prosecutors to be called as witnesses, only a couple of other items of note occurred during Friday’s hearing.
The first is Judge Burnside ruled from the bench to reduce the 73 counts in the original May 14, 2014, indictment to 45. Because some of the charges list all three defendants, they faced a total of 83 counts. It is now 53 counts. At the judge’s request, prosecutors reduced the number of charges in mid-January.
The other ruling Friday was to have a court reporter in all closed-door meetings between attorneys from both sides to keep a record of the proceedings.
That request came from Dan Kasaris, the lead Oakhill prosecutor, because Yavorcik is representing himself and is now participating in those talks.
Any statements made by a defendant representing himself in these private talks can be used against him, Kasaris said.
Yavorcik said he would be taping all of the discussions.
But Judge Burnside told him that “wholesale taping is not permitted” without her approval.