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Federal judge limits documents Hoerig can file in federal court
By Ed Runyan
WARREN
A federal judge has ruled that Claudia Hoerig will no longer be allowed to file documents in federal court about her aggravated-murder case unless the filings relate directly to the decision he made in her case earlier.
A Trumbull County Common Pleas Court jury on Thursday found her guilty of aggravated murder in the 2007 shooting death of her husband, Karl, that happened in the couple’s Newton Falls home.
U.S. District Judge John R. Adams of the Northern District Court in Akron said Hoerig, 54, had filed eight motions and 20 other “various memoranda and supplements” since Sept. 21. Most are handwritten, but she also filed copies of documents that attorneys have written and wrote in the margins of some documents.
Her initial filing sought to dismiss her case, alleging her speedy-trial rights had been violated. Judge Adams ruled her petition was premature because she had not exhausted all her claims in the state courts.
But she continued to file other things, including a motion asking for the gag order imposed by Judge Andrew Logan of Trumbull County Common Pleas Court to be lifted and one seeking protection against county jail staff.
Judge Adams said none of those filings addressed his dismissal based on speedy trial. Instead, the filings seek “to have this court interfere with her state-court criminal proceeding. She seeks to have this court overrule decisions made by [Judge Logan] and seeks to halt those proceedings.”
Judge Adams’s entry says “there is no justification for this court to interfere with those proceedings.”
As a result, Judge Adams denied the seven newest motions and ruled she “shall not file any further documents in this matter with the exception of a notice of appeal from any of [Judge Adams’] rulings.”
The federal clerk of courts “is instructed to return any future filings received from Hoerig that do not constitute a notice of appeal.”
Judge Logan, who presided over the case, ruled similarly in mid-December that Hoerig is banned from filing memoranda in common pleas court without the signature of one of her attorneys.
Trumbull County prosecutors filed a brief after seeing two Hoerig filings calling them “rambling, twaddling documents of drivel and bushwa [rubbish or nonsense] ... filled with vicious ... attacks.”