Court security is a balancing act, sheriff says
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By PETER H. MILLIKEN
milliken@vindy.com
YOUNGSTOWN
The courts and the sheriff’s office face the challenge of protecting rights to a fair trial while meeting security needs in high profile cases.
This balancing act is under scrutiny after the abrupt end of Robert Seman’s capital murder case, the Mahoning County sheriff said. Seman made a suicide leap in the county courthouse rotunda Monday.
“You’re forced to balance obvious issues of security, the safety of my officers, the safety of the judge, the attorneys, the public and Mr. Seman himself, with not wanting to taint a jury or affect the ability to seat a jury by having him (the defendant) being seen with restraints on,” explained Sheriff Jerry Greene.
Seman made his fatal 43-foot leap over a railing from the fourth floor to the first floor as deputy sheriffs escorted him from a pretrial hearing before Judge Maureen A. Sweeney of the county common pleas court.
Jury selection for Seman’s trial was to have begun Wednesday in Portage County, after Judge Sweeney granted a defense motion to move the trial there because pretrial publicity interfered with seating an impartial jury in Mahoning County.
Seman was to go on trial for the slayings of Corinne Gump, 10; and her grandparents, William and Judith Schmidt, during a March 30, 2015, arson at the Schmidts’ Powers Way home.
In August 2015, Judge Sweeney granted a defense motion, which the prosecution did not oppose, to allow Seman to appear at all court proceedings in civilian clothing.
“We couldn’t ensure that some jurors up in Portage County weren’t going to get on the internet and look back at this case,” said Seman’s lawyer, Thomas Zena, explaining why the defense wanted Seman dressed in street clothes without visible restraints.
Judge Sweeney also ordered that Seman was not to appear to be in custody in court and while being escorted to and from court in public areas of the courthouse for all pre-trial and trial appearances to avoid prejudicing potential jurors, Greene explained.
The goal was to avoid images of Seman appearing to be in custody being taken by the media or others and then aired or posted on the internet or social media, where potential jurors, including those in Portage County, might have seen them, the sheriff said.
Seman was not shackled or handcuffed in the courtroom or while he was escorted to and from it within the public areas of the courthouse.
Instead, he wore a steel restraining bar secured to his leg by Velcro straps and hidden under a pant leg, with the rod being designed to lock at its knee hinge and slow and impair his gait if he tried to run away.
Escorting him to and from court was challenging under the court-ordered restrictions.
“If we are flanking Mr. Seman, he looks to be in custody,” observed Maj. William Cappabianca of the sheriff’s office.
If a defendant is fully restrained, standard escort procedure would be to have deputies flanking him, Greene said.
“But he is not fully restrained in this instance, so I prefer to have a reactionary gap,” as seen on the pre-leap security camera video, with deputies walking in front of and behind him to enable the deputies to react to whatever he might have done and also to reduce the risk of deputies falling over the railing, the sheriff said.
From a security standpoint, it is preferable to keep a defendant handcuffed as he is escorted to and from the courtroom and to remove and reapply the handcuffs in the courtroom out of sight of jurors, Greene said.
Judge Sweeney declined to address this issue with The Vindicator.
On Wednesday, Judge Sweeney appeared to have been converted to that point of view when she ruled that Lance Hundley, a defendant in another capital murder case, would be transported to her court from now on “with handcuffs and leg shackles or any other restraints the sheriff’s department deems necessary,” but that he would not be shackled in court in jurors’ presence.
Zena said he would have no basis to object if one of his clients is cuffed while being escorted to and from court and uncuffed while in court, as long as jurors don’t see the cuffing and uncuffing.
Hundley, 47, of Washington Street, Warren, or Cleveland Street, Youngstown, is charged in the Nov. 6, 2015, slaying of Erika Huff, 41, in her Cleveland Street home on Youngstown’s South Side.
Hundley is accused of beating Huff to death, beating her mother and setting the house ablaze.
Courthouse security improvements are on the table for discussion, Greene said.
“This is something that, of course, we’re going to take a look at. This is an issue that will be visited with the courts, and then, we’ll discuss and go over if there’s anything that we can do a little bit different,” he said.
“A lot of that will be up to the court, especially when it’s dealing with trials,” he added.
“We have successfully provided common pleas courthouse security in that courthouse since it was built,” and opened in 1911, Maj. Cappabianca observed.
“In law enforcement, you cannot expect the unexpected. It happens. It happened here,” he concluded.