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Day 2 of deliberations in Yavorcik trial
CLEVELAND
The jury in the Martin Yavorcik corruption/conspiracy trial resumes deliberations today.
Jurors didn’t make a decision Thursday, the first day of deliberations. They started at 10:30 a.m. and ended about 4 p.m. The jurors took at least one break.
Deliberations are to resume at 9:15 a.m in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court.
Among the evidence is numerous hours of secretly recorded tapes made by Harry Strabala, a political consultant and FBI informant.
Listening to the tapes – and the sound quality is poor on many of those played for the jury – could be time consuming.
Yavorcik faces 10 felonies: one count of engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, one count of conspiracy, three counts of bribery, two counts of tampering with records, and three counts of money laundering.
Prosecutors say Yavorcik ran as an independent in the 2008 Mahoning County prosecutor race against incumbent Democrat Paul J. Gains to put an end to a criminal investigation of Yavorcik’s political allies.
The investigation was related to his allies’ efforts in 2006 to stop or impede the county’s purchase of Oakhill Renaissance Place, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center.
The county moved its Department of Job and Family Services to Oakhill from the Garland Plaza, owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary. The county had paid $449,000 annually in rent at Garland.
Yavorcik said he ran in 2008 because he believed Gains was a “vindictive” prosecutor who was out “to get his political enemies.”
Dan Kasaris, the case’s lead prosecutor and a senior assistant Ohio attorney general, said unlike Yavorcik, Gains “is not corruptible.”
Judge Janet R. Burnside, who is overseeing this trial, gives jurors discretion when deliberating. But she said if they don’t reach a decision by Friday, the jurors wouldn’t meet on the weekend and would have to resume Monday.