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Lone Oakhill defendant, Martin Yavorcik, committed to trial
oakhill case
CLEVELAND
Martin Yavorcik, the lone Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case defendant not to plead guilty, said he is committed to going to trial and 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.
Judge Burnside responded: “There is no evidence of use of any wiretap. To the contrary, according to both defendant’s motion and the state’s brief, an informant merely recorded his conversations with defendant without the defendant’s awareness. No legal issue is raised by that activity.”
Yavorcik also requested to read transcripts of portions of grand jury testimony. The judge wrote that the motion is denied “at this time,” and repeated that Yavorcik filed this motion about a year too late. She added that Yavorcik hasn’t shown a need for an inspection of the testimony.
Yavorcik has contended that he had immunity when he provided information to the FBI and a special prosecutor in the first Oakhill case in three interviews in 2010 and 2011 and it’s being used against him violating the agreement he had, and the case should be dismissed.
The judge wrote that Yavorcik will have an opportunity to address the immunity issue at a Thursday pretrial hearing.
Yavorcik’s case is to start Monday.
Yavorcik objected to prosecutors playing portions of eight of the secretly recorded tapes during their opening statements. The judge ruled that she wouldn’t permit any recordings to be played or their transcripts to be read to the jury during opening statements.
Yavorcik faces 11 felonies – one count of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, one count of conspiracy, three counts of bribery, four counts of money laundering, and two counts of tampering with records.
“The prosecutors are pleased with the judge’s rulings,” said Dan Tierney, spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, which is prosecuting the case with the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.
Yavorcik said the judge’s ruling were “a mixed bag. It’s nothing shocking.”
Prosecutors contend Yavorcik ran for county prosecutor in 2008 and if he won, he would call off an investigation into alleged illegal efforts to stop the relocation of a county agency from a plaza owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary to Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center owned by the county. He lost that race by 38 percentage points.
On Feb. 26, his two codefendants – Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally and ex-Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, both Democrats – pleaded guilty to reduced charges and agreed to cooperate with prosecutors.
McNally pleaded guilty to four misdemeanors. He had faced 18 felonies and seven misdemeanors. Sciortino pleaded guilty to one felony and two misdemeanors. He faced 11 felonies and six misdemeanors. The two will be sentenced March 28.
As part of his agreement, Sciortino will plead guilty to one felony and one misdemeanor in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. He faced 25 felonies. He’ll be sentenced March 31.