Judge will rule soon Hoerig remarks

WARREN — Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court said today he will be prepared soon to rule on a defense motion asking for remarks made by Claudia Hoerig be suppressed from her Sept. 17 aggravated murder trial.

The judge noted that he had granted extensions to the attorneys for providing their filings on the matter, and he only received those filings Tuesday.

Also at today's hearing, Judge Logan established a deadline for June 30 for an expert witness to provide a report and advise whether he will be testifying at the trial.

Prosecutors also said there have been some challenges in taking information from two computers seized from the Hoerig home because of the age of the computers.

Hoerig, 53, is charged with aggravated murder in the death of her husband, Karl, in March of 2007 in their Newton Falls home.

Her attorneys with the Ohio Public Defender's Office sought to have remarks she made the day she was brought back to Trumbull County from her native Brazil suppressed from evidence.

They argued that federal agents used "trickery" when they put her on an airplane bound for Akron by misleading her as to where she was going. They also said the agents should have read her her rights before the airplane ride but instead "sat back over a period of several hours, gained the defendant’s trust through casual conversation” and listened as she told them she killed her husband by shooting him to death because his comments angered her.

Prosecutors argued that the agents and a detective with the Trumbull County sheriff's office did everything legally Jan. 17 and fully informed her of her rights before she gave a videotaped interview at the sheriff's office.

Hoerig fled to her native Brazil after her husband’s death and lived there freely for about nine years before the Brazilian government stripped her of her Brazilian citizenship and put her in a Brazilian prison. She was released to U.S. officials 21 months later.

Hoerig’s return culminated nearly 12 years of work by Trumbull County Prosecutor Dennis Watkins and others who persisted in asking for her return to Ohio despite Brazil’s insistence that the country did not have to extradite Brazilian natives accused of crimes in the United States. Karl Hoerig was a major in the United States Air Force Reserves who flew nearly 200 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan and also worked as a commercial pilot.