Former Niles Mayor Ralph Infante seeks two-month delay in his public-corruption case

By Ed Runyan

runyan@vindy.com

WARREN

Anyone hoping for a quick resolution to the Ralph Infante Jr. public-corruption case probably should take note of a recent filing by the former Niles mayor’s attorney.

Atty. John Juhasz filed a motion with visiting Judge Patricia Cosgrove asking for an additional 60 days to reply to the filings by special Prosecutor Dan Kasaris, who has provided “thousands of pages” of evidence so far.

Kasaris told the judge during the first hearing Dec. 5 that he would be turning over one or two CDs holding a “voluminous” amount of evidence.

Among the evidence are written or recorded statements from 2009 and 2015 to investigators made by Infante; written or recorded statements his wife, Judy, made in 2015; and written or recorded statements made by city employee Scott Shaffer. Prosecutors also have turned over forensic computer analysis, photographs, papers and documents, according to a filing.

Infante, 61, is charged with accepting bribes, accepting envelopes containing cash from city employees and participating in a criminal enterprise involving other city employees.

In all, the allegations say his corruption totaled nearly $200,000 going to him and his wife dating back to 1993, just after he became mayor.

Judy Infante, 67, also was indicted on 10 charges, accused of helping her husband with records tampering such as filing false tax returns.

Shaffer, 51, is charged with two counts of theft in office, accused of selling city property for cash and using city equipment for personal reasons for more than a decade.

Prosecutors have turned over reports from law enforcement, the FBI, auditor of state, and Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation on a DVD.

“It appears from [pretrial evidence] that the government has been investigating this case and collecting materials for years, some of the materials going back eight or nine years, and some of the allegations in the indictment date back even further,” Juhasz wrote in his filing.

“A number of government agents and investigators from both the state and federal governments have worked on the case and were working on the case long before” he was hired to work on Infante’s defense, Juhasz adds.

Furthermore, the filing says Kasaris told Juhasz last week by email that Kasaris plans to turn over even more pretrial evidence.

Kasaris filed a 33-page document Dec. 22 called a bill of particulars that added more layers of detail than provided in the 42-page indictment, which gave an immense amount of detail into the 54 charges the Infantes and Shaffer face.

Juhasz said he also needs the extra time to formulate and file pretrial motions, he said. Such motions sometimes request suppression of certain evidence the state plans to use or ask that the trial be moved to another county because of pretrial publicity.

So far, Judge Cosgrove has not responded to Juhasz’s request for more time.

At Infante’s Dec. 5 arraignment, the judge said she was setting a deadline of last Monday for the prosecution and defense to exchange pretrial evidence. She also said the final pretrial hearing in the case would be March 20, and the trial would begin at 9 a.m. April 24.

If she grants 60 additional days for Juhasz to respond to the state’s pretrial evidence, those dates will have to be revised.

Judy Infante’s attorney, Louis DeFabio, filed a motion Tuesday asking for an additional 30 days for the same reasons as Juhasz, adding that he “surely cannot respond” to pretrial evidence he “has only recently received or not yet received.”