Yavorcik affirms commitment to going forward with Oakhill trial as motions are denied

CLEVELAND

Martin Yavorcik, the lone Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case defendant not to plead guilty, said he is committed to going to trial to defend himself against 11 felony counts.

“I’m planning on going forward with the hearing and trial,” he said. Yavorcik has a pretrial hearing Thursday with his trial scheduled to start Monday.

Meanwhile, Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, overseeing his trial, rejected motions filed by Yavorcik to dismiss the charges and suppress testimony.

Yavorcik, a failed 2008 independent Mahoning County prosecutor candidate, wanted the judge to not allow secretly recorded conversations made by Harry Strabala, a Youngstown political consultant, of the defendant and others for the FBI to be used as evidence. The judge rejected that request, writing that the deadline to submit motions such as that was in March 2015.

“There is no apparent explanation for [Yavorcik] waiting until [Feb. 15] to file the motion for such testimony,” Judge Burnside wrote in a journal entry. “The motion is not based on recently discovered evidence.”

Even if the motion was filed timely, the judge wrote it “must be denied on its merits.”

In a motion, Yavorcik, an attorney defending himself, wrote that Strabala illegally wiretapped him.

Read more about the case in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.