The Pattakos Law Firm LLC, 101 Ghent Road, Fairlawn, OH (2026)

The Pattakos Law Firm LLC is a litigation firm based in Northeast Ohio serving clients statewide. Our founding attorney Peter Pattakos began his career at the international law firm Jones Day and has since worked to establish a track record of extraordinary success in obtaining justice for people whose rights have been violated or threatened by powerful corporate and governmental interests, includ

ing in highly complex, contentious, and publicized matters. Peter is one of the very few attorneys in Ohio or anywhere in the U.S.A. who has delivered winning closing arguments to juries both in multiple civil cases where more than $250,000.00 in damages were awarded, as well as in multiple felony prosecutions resulting in complete acquittals. Our law practice is rooted in a belief, based on experience, that no matter the quantity of resources a party dedicates to distorting facts or the law, the U.S. civil-justice system -- while not perfect -- is well designed to allow truth and justice to prevail with the assistance of competent and dedicated counsel. Our firm handles all types of litigation, with a focus on civil rights and abuses of governmental and corporate power, and have obtained substantial settlements or judgments for our clients in a variety of matters, including wrongful death, employment discrimination (including whistleblower retaliation claims), medical malpractice and legal malpractice claims, other personal injury cases, and business and contract disputes. Our attorneys are also experienced in the practice of criminal defense, and have prevailed for our clients in numerous felony prosecutions and high profile cases where abuses of police or prosecutorial power are at issue. And we are skilled in engaging with the media when necessary to expose matters of public interest and protect our clients’ reputations. Please browse our website -http://www.pattakoslaw.com - for more information about our philosophy and experience, and how best to get in touch with us.

06/10/2026

Yesterday we filed an Affidavit of Disqualification in The Supreme Court of Ohio against Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams regarding her biased mishandling of the jury trial over Sydney Yahner’s malicious prosecution claims against prominent Cleveland restaurant owner Bobby George and his cousin and business partner Jacqueline Boyd. These claims relate to George and Boyd’s preposterous lies that led to the infamous “felony assault with a megaphone” indictment brought (at George’s and Boyd's behest) by Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley back in the summer of 2020.

Our Affidavit and supporting documents—which include a copy of the Motion for a New Trial that we filed last week, which we’re asking to be decided on by a newly appointed and unbiased judge—show a pattern of egregious misconduct by Judge Collier-Williams, whereby she initially attempted to tilt the proceedings in the Defendants’ favor; and then, as it became obvious to everyone in the courtroom (especially after Mr. George’s detestable presence on the witness stand) that the jury was likely to award Yahner a substantial verdict, intentionally deprived the jury of that opportunity and Yahner of her day in Court by granting a directed verdict for the Defendants despite overwhelming evidence in Yahner’s favor; and then proceeded to hold a “contempt hearing” wherein she made gratuitously disparaging comments about our law firm’s conduct during the trial; and then lied to everyone in the courtroom about what the jury said to her about her decision to enter judgment for the Defendants, in what was an apparent effort to sanitize her wrongful conduct and mislead the parties, their lawyers, and the public about what the jury really thought about the case.

Two of these jurors contacted us immediately after the trial to tell us how upset they and their fellow jurors were that the Judge dismissed Yahner’s claims without giving them a chance to render a verdict. These jurors were also understandably shocked and dismayed that Judge Collier-Williams so misleadingly misrepresented her conversations with them, and were understandably disillusioned by their experience serving as jurors in this case. One of those jurors gave us an affidavit, pictured with this post, in which she also refutes the judge’s biased and unwarranted attacks on our firm’s professionalism.

Such judicial misconduct is alarming in any context, but the circumstances here are especially concerning given what they reflect of the endemic corruption in the Cuyahoga County Courthouse, particularly as to the influence of County Prosecutor Mike O’Malley and a clique of favored lawyers (and apparently also some judges) who dispense a fraudulent brand of “justice” by influence peddling, as opposed to by resolving cases on their merits based on the facts and law at issue. As noted in our Affidavit, the Yahner case is one of three cases our firm has recently handled—along with the Antoine Tolbert/New Era trial last summer, and regarding Max Miller’s egregious lies against our client, the Westlake Doctor Feras Hamdan—which all involve O’Malley’s office having brought life-destroying felony charges against our firm’s clients, based on evidence one may reasonably view as shockingly insufficient, and for reasons one may reasonably conclude are transparently political. In all three cases, our firm successfully defended against the wrongful felony charges, exposed what may be reasonably viewed as shocking prosecutorial error or misconduct, and pursued civil claims for our clients related to the wrongful charges.

Notably, Max Miller’s lawyer in the Hamdan case, Larry Zukerman, also happens to be the same lawyer who represented Judge Collier-Williams’s son, Omnisun Azali, in a case (Cuyahoga C.P. No. CR-21-660200) wherein Azali was convicted of murdering his wife. In this case, Judge Collier-Williams’s conduct relative to the alleged murder was called into question by prosecutors (who were not Cuyahoga County Prosecutors), and wherein Zukerman assisted Azali in obtaining a favorable sentence. This is the same Larry Zukerman who, as part of his representation of Miller in this case, has repeatedly made unhinged public accusations against us of “antisemitism,” including of having “regularly disseminat[ed] antisemitic content online,” for our merely having expressed criticism of the Israeli government and military’s slaughter of countless innocent civilians in Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran—the same type of criticism that caused Zukerman’s client Miller to pin wrongful criminal charges on our client Dr. Hamdan.

And of course there’s also O’Malley’s highly publicized actions in recently reversing a 13-year ban on partisan political activity by employees of his office, which was enacted by his predecessor, Tim McGinty, to distance the office from the appearance that politics was interfering with the administration of justice in the County. So much for that, as everyone in the Cuyahoga County Courthouse and surrounding legal community saw, when Judge William Vodrey was the only one of the thirteen Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judges up for re-eelection who faced a primary challenger this year, an assistant prosecutor from O’Malley’s office, which even Vodrey himself publicly attributed to an effort by O’Malley to unseat him because O’Malley was “displeased” with his handling of the Tolbert trial.

In sum, whatever else you want to call a courthouse where a three-term and counting prosecutor with O’Malley’s track record, including in making clear that judges and others who treat politically disfavored parties fairly will be subject to retaliation by him and his office, you can’t call it a “Justice Center.” And while Judges do make honest mistakes, the egregious nature of Judge Collier-Williams’s legal errors here, combined with her gratuitous disparaging remarks against us throughout and after the trial, and worst of all her misleading misrepresentations about her conversation with the jury members about her dismissal of the case, not only warrant her disqualification from this case, but also her removal from the bench.

As the Michigan Supreme Court has noted in a case we cited in our Affidavit, “judges occupying the watchtower of our system of justice, should preserve, if not uplift, the standard of truth, not trample it underfoot or hide in its shady recesses.” To say nothing of prosecutors. We hope and expect that our state’s Chief Justice will not look lightly on Judge Collier-Williams’s actions in the Yahner case, and that Cuyahoga County voters, the next time Collier-Williams and O’Malley are up for re-election, won’t either. Regardless, we’ll keep working to ensure that Ms. Yahner eventually has her day in court, and that basic civil rights are respected by judges and prosecutors in the Cuyahoga County Courthouse and throughout this state. As always, stay tuned here for further updates and thank you for reading and for your support of our firm and this page.

05/26/2026

After a week-long jury trial before Judge Beverly McGookey in the Erie County Court of Common Pleas, the jury came back deadlocked today as to all twelve felony counts against our client Ashli Ford, which, to us, speaks more to the corruption of the jury pool in this case than to anything relative to the merits of the ridiculous charges the Erie County Prosecutor brought against Ms. Ford.

The account by Ms. Crystal Kohl-Couch, attached to this post below, provides an accurate summary of these farcical proceedings and the prosecution's "evidence" in this case, wherein an investigation was launched by the Erie County Prosecutor against our client — who, notably, is a prominent victim's advocate and outspoken critic of corruption in local law enforcement agencies in the Erie-Huron-Ottawa Tri-county area, who routinely draws tens of thousands of viewers on any one of her social-media posts — without a single complaint from anyone about the mortgage documents that the prosecutor claimed were "forged" or "falsified" so as to support all twelve of the felony counts at issue. There was not a single bit of evidence introduced in this trial to show that Ms. Ford was doing anything other than what her ex-husband (the only ostensible "victim" in this case) had plainly authorized her to do repeatedly, including in writing, which was to do whatever was necessary, as long as he didn't have to pay out of pocket for it, to remove him from the deed and mortgage to their former marital home after their divorce was finalized in 2021 amidst the foreclosure moratorium that prevented this from being resolved by the court at the time the divorce became final.

One especially wild fact that Ms. Kohl-Couch's summary below omits is that on the last day of the trial, last Friday morning, just before we were set to deliver closing arguments to the jury, two of our twelve jurors got eliminated by the prosecutor and judge as if it were a game of whack-a-mole. The prosecutor moved to disqualify one of the jurors on the grounds that he was admonished by the judge for having fallen asleep, apparently for no more than a minute or so, on the first day of the trial. This juror denied having fallen asleep at that time, and that was the last that anyone heard of this issue until Friday when the prosecutor made their request to have this juror removed after all the evidence had been entered. We objected, noting that under the few cases we could find addressing such extraordinary situations, courts required such requests to be made at the time the alleged misconduct was observed, not days after the fact when one side or the other got around to deciding it would be convenient for them. The judge excused this juror anyway, and also breezily let another juror go when she said she had a graduation to attend that afternoon. That left us with no alternate jurors going into the holiday weekend. We have never seen or heard of any such thing happen with multiple jurors, let alone going into closing arguments, in any case, let alone a felony jury trial. We'll have more to say about this later, but it should suffice to say for now that irregularities like this make us especially grateful for a hung jury in this case.

Also, we would place special emphasis on the part of Ms. Kohl-Couch's post where she writes that, "if the government can relentlessly prosecute someone without a clear victim, without complaints from the institutions supposedly harmed, and despite testimony raising serious questions about the investigation itself, then this should concern every citizen — regardless of politics or personal opinion."

We're sure this case won't get any easier for the State to prosecute if they try again, but it should have never happened in the first place, and this is yet another especially telling demonstration of how immunity for police and prosecutors has spun so far out of control that our most basic constitutional rights as citizens are effectively meaningless against them. As for other things that have spun dangerously out of control, there's a certain disgraced former newspaper editor who is now a current deranged Substack blogger who's also referenced in Ms. Kohl-Couch's post below, who, along with the local newspaper's official coverage of this case (which might as well have been written from another planet), reflects strongly on how the disappearance of meaningful journalism has also led to the degradation of our basic rights and the quality of justice available in our courts.

Anyway, again, we'll have much more to say about this case later but for now we can call it a big swing and a miss for the Erie County Prosecutor's Office, and we can be grateful that Ashli Ford remains a free woman and free to exercise her First Amendment rights in Erie County and beyond.

Finally, if you were one of the jurors on this case, dismissed or otherwise, please note that you are free by law to communicate with us about any and all aspects of your experience as a juror in this case and we would be very glad to hear from you, as any information you might share with us would help us ensure that the violation of Ms. Ford's basic rights that has taken place in this case never happens to anyone again. Please feel free to email Attorney Peter Pattakos at peter [at] pattakoslaw [dot com], or call him on our office line at 330.836.8533.

05/08/2026

Following up on yesterday's post on Sydney Yahner's malicious prosecution trial, one of the worst miscarriages of justice we’ve ever seen took place this morning in Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams's courtroom where she deprived our Cuyahoga County jury of the opportunity to decide on Ms. Yahner’s claims, instead granting Bobby George and his cousin Jacqueline Boyd a directed verdict in their favor, on the purported basis that we failed to enter sufficient proof to create a genuine question for the jury as to all three essential elements of Yahner’s claims.

More specifically,

(1) Judge Collier-Williams ruled that there was no evidence from which the jury could conclude that George and Boyd “maliciously instituted” the underlying “felony assault with a megaphone” charges against Yahner; or, in other words, that the jury could not reasonably conclude that George and Boyd lied about Yahner and her fellow protesters to cause them harm and/or accomplish an ulterior purpose - which in this case was obviously to shut down the protests at George and Boyd’s Town Hall, Barley House, and Harry Buffalo restaurants by the loosely organized “With Peace We Protest” group (which consisted mostly of about two-dozen twenty-somethings who, not unlike millions of other Americans at the time, wanted to make their voices heard by the powers-that-be in the summer of George Floyd’s murder (2020), whose protest Yahner had joined for about 45 minutes on the day she allegedly committed the assault at issue);

(2) The Judge also ruled that no reasonable jury could have concluded that Boyd lacked sufficient cause to accuse Yahner for assaulting her with the megaphone at the protest, even though the testimony at trial was undisputed that Yahner at most came within 4 to 5 feet of her, with a standard-issue megaphone, purchased on Amazon, that did not cause any alleged harm to any of the dozens of people who were on the scene that day during the 45 minutes or so that Yahner was present at the protest with her megaphone;

(3) and finally, Judge Collier-Williams ruled that the underlying criminal proceedings did not “terminate in Yahner’s favor,” because the prosecutor dismissed them “without prejudice,” and therefore could technically re-file the charges against Yahner before the statute of limitations on the underlying assault charge expires this July, even though these charges were dismissed in October of 2021, and even though there was not a bit of evidence to show that the prosecutor would ever reindict -- an argument raised by Defendants for the first time yesterday.

The essence of Judge Collier-Williams’s ruling was that “reasonable minds could not differ” as to whether it was (1) “more likely than not” that Boyd had faked an injury, and (2) that she and George lied to and threatened police, and exercised their substantial political influence, to have Yahner and some of her fellow protesters charged for crimes that Boyd and George knew she did not commit, in order to eliminate the inconvenience that the 2020 protests were causing them.

What’s especially extraordinary is that the Judge made this ruling despite having already twice rejected the very same arguments George and Boyd had already advanced in (1) seeking dismissal of Yahner’s complaint for failure to state a claim under Civil Rule 12, and (2) seeking summary judgment under Civil Rule 56 based on an argument that a reasonable jury could not find for Yahner based on the evidence we presented in her summary judgment briefing.

Having already found in Yahner’s favor as to Defendant’s Rule 56 argument, ruling that we’d presented enough evidence on summary judgment to show a genuine issue of material fact for the jury to decide upon, the judge could have only properly granted a directed verdict for the defense if either (1) we would have somehow failed to present the same evidence at trial that we presented with our Rule 56 briefing, or (2) that the defense not only presented new evidence at the trial that they had not presented with their Rule 56 briefing, but that this new evidence somehow undermined our evidence to such an extent that no reasonable jury could any longer find in Yahner’s favor.

Not only did neither of these things happen during this four-day trial, it was quite the opposite, including, among other evidence, that

(1) the four police officers who were on the scene that day, who observed and recorded with their dashboard cameras every second of what happened between the parties at this protest, testified and unanimously confirmed that they were present at the scene that day to fulfill their essential function to “protect and serve,” and observed nothing that would have constituted an assault requiring their intervention;

(2) clear video evidence and unrebutted testimony confirming that what Boyd and George misrepresented as a felony “assault,” was nothing more than Yahner having walked within a few feet of Boyd while using the siren function on her standard issue megaphone (which, again, was not alleged to have harmed any of the dozens of others who were on the scene that day);

(3) the testimony of one of this state and nation’s foremost experts on hearing loss, Dr. Edward Dodson, confirming that Boyd’s hearing in both ears was within normal range, and that her medical records not only failed to show that she suffered any trauma to her ears that day, but indicated that the mild and common hearing differential she had between her two ears was more likely than not to have evolved over time;

(4) body camera footage showing the wild profanity-laced threats that George made to Cleveland police officers to pressure them to charge Yahner and her fellow protesters, whom he repeatedly described as “terrorists”;

(5) text messages from George threatening two of Yahner’s fellow protesters the day before the protest at issue, including specific threats to put “assault charges” on one of them, and that he “had a rough time coming up for him”;

(6) evidence showing that George’s high-powered lawyers were exerting influence on police officials and prosecutors behind the scenes; and

(7) multiple misrepresentations in George’s and Boyd’s testimony at trial that directly conflicted with their prior sworn statements as to numerous key issues of fact.

Under Ohio law, evidence showing that a grand jury’s indictment was maliciously influenced by falsified evidence is sufficient to overcome the presumption that the indictment itself is evidence of probable cause. Yet the only evidence that George and Boyd could offer in response to Yahner’s case was essentially to assert (1) that there was an undercover “intelligence” officer at the TownHall restaurant who was also observing the protest at day (but for some reason never did anything to intervene in the supposed “assault”), (2) based on that officer’s post-hoc review of the very same body camera the jury saw, it was that officer’s decision to take the case to the grand jury, after he wrote his first and only police report that was ever filed about the incident on August 7, nearly a month after the alleged assault, but four days after Yahner and her lawyers (us) showed up in court to oppose Boyd’s petition for a protective order that would have kept them 500 feet away from Boyd, George, and all of their restaurant locations; and (3) that this “intelligence” officer’s decision to pursue charges was somehow made completely independently of Boyd’s proven lies, and George’s unhinged threats.

While the full trial record will be made available for the appeal, the basics are easily reviewed at the following links:

(A) Here’s what was Defendants’ essential piece of evidence, capturing what Boyd repeatedly urged to police officers was Yahner’s “assault” of her (about 30 seconds long), which the Defendants played to the jury approximately 20 times during the trial (this was literally the only independent evidence of “assault” that they presented; not a single other person testified to say they saw an assault that day, and, again, all officers on the scene said they were watching everything that happened on the scene and never witnessed any assault);

https://thepattakoslawfirmlcc.box.com/s/wwb1f5fw4ahr50dy9llmk3cqdiu8ym99

(B) Here’s Bobby George’s profanity-laced tirade upon arriving at the scene after the protesters had left (about 5 minutes long) to berate the officers for not arresting the protesters for “assaulting” his cousin, who is pictured on the scene interacting with the officers while showing no sign of any injury, let alone significant trauma from soundwaves to her ear;

https://thepattakoslawfirmlcc.box.com/s/ieovqywwj7nast7u6bqttrd9xn5ocrh3

(C) Here’s Bobby’s even more profane and threatening follow-up call the same day (about 90 seconds long), threatening to sue the “little b*tch” “f*cking bum” police officers and “whoop their ass[es].”

https://thepattakoslawfirmlcc.box.com/s/c917ufpjkgt5taz0i6r494o244i7ed9b

And (D) here’s all the dash cam video from multiple angles capturing the entirety of the protest, and the entirety of the 45 minutes while Yahner was on the scene with her alleged assault victim Ms. Boyd, which is two videos, each approximately two hours long, which, along with Boyd’s false statements, falsified medical records, and George’s threats, constitutes the entirety of the “evidence” the intelligence officer reviewed in deciding to submit charges to the grand jury.

https://thepattakoslawfirmlcc.box.com/s/017tywaybzildbn8a6plxq7jn91ggm28

It’s extremely rare for a trial judge to grant a directed verdict under any circumstances, after having allowed a case to be hard by a jury in the first place; it’s even rarer to grant a directed verdict before having heard both sides of the case (the Defendants here were not even required to present their own witnesses); and, for the reasons stated above, it’s especially inexplicable that Judge Collier-Williams did so here. We’ve never seen a jury react as strongly in favor of our presentation of our client’s case as this jury did throughout this trial, and neutral observers of the trial were stunned by the Judge’s dismissal of the claim, including one who remarked that she was newly terrified for her son due to his inclination to attend political protests.

We don’t doubt that the Judge had her reasons for what she did here but this is as concerning a result as one could see come out of our courts, for a lot of reasons: not just because of the obvious chilling effect on all manner of First Amendment-protected protest activity; but also because it sends the message that even in the branch of government where we’re all supposed to be equal under the law, people who have extraordinary monetary wealth not only live under a different set of laws than people who don’t, but the law will allow those with extraordinary wealth get away with all manner of abuse against ordinary citizens. In short, if our legal system offers no remedy to Sydney Yahner for what the evidence shows that Bobby George and Jacqueline Boyd did to her here, then it can under no reasonable view be called a “justice system,” let alone one where all Americans can be said to be equal under the law. And if our political system is electing prosecutors and judges who are willing to shrug and say, “we’re sorry that happened to you Sydney, but this is just how our system works, and we can’t be letting people like you recover for harm caused to you by the malicious acts of people like Bobby George,” then it is a political system that’s badly in need of reform.

Anyway, this is why we have the appeals courts, and if we don’t fight these cases even when we might lose them then the failures that allow these things to happen in the first place never see the light of day. We expect to have substantial amicus support for this appeal to help ensure that this case leads to justice for Sydney Yahner, apparently necessary clarification of Ohio law on-malicious prosecution claims, and much needed restraints on how much power Ohio law will give to claims by police officers, even and perhaps especially ostensible “intelligence” officers, that are wholly unsupported and heavily contradicted by all available evidence.

Finally, we would encourage any of the jurors who heard this case to contact us by email [peter [at] pattakoslaw [dot com] or by phone [330.836.8533] to confidentially share your impressions of these proceedings with us; and of course anyone who's interested in supporting Ms. Yahner's cause in any way should please feel free to reach out as well.

Thanks once again for reading and supporting this page and our firm.

05/07/2026

The epic saga of the notorious "Town Hall protest/felony assault with a megaphone case" is, after six long years, finally reaching its conclusion in Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams's courtroom (23(B)) on the 23rd floor of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center. I will be cross-examining Mr. Robert "Bobby" George at 2PM, the jury gets the case tomorrow or Monday to decide on our client Sydney Yahner's malicious prosecution claims against Mr. George and his co-defendant cousin/business partner, and hopefully justice will be served ⚖️

05/06/2026

We’re glad to report that our client Citlali Afsharian, a paraprofessional for special-needs students at Orange City Schools, has been cleared of wrongdoing and permitted to return to work after her employment was suspended due to unhinged reports by political extremists who falsely accused her of “antisemitism.” These accusations were based on Facebook posts that Ms. Afsharian made to her private account, in her personal time, in which she was critical of the Israeli government and its military actions against innocent people across the Middle East, including her poignant statement that “Today’s Anne Frank is a Lebanese Muslim girl hiding in the attic of a Lebanese Christian Family, terrified of Israeli Jewish soldiers finding her and killing her.”

Our firm pointed out to the district’s officials that all of Ms. Afsharian’s speech for which she was suspended was clearly protected from punishment under the First Amendment, referring them to clear and controlling legal precedent leaving no doubt about the constitutionally protected nature of Afsharian’s posts. We also cited to caselaw confirming what is obvious to most people: That criticism of the Israeli government and “antisemitism” are two entirely different things, even despite a malicious and heavily funded campaign to convince folks to the contrary.

As outrageous as it is that Ms. Afsharian was suspended in the first place and had her name smeared all over local news reports about an Orange Schools employee “under investigation for antisemitic social media posts,” this is ultimately a win for free speech, as well as for basic decency, humanity, and justice. As University of Michigan Professor Derek Peterson recently stated, “it should not be controversial to have one’s heart opened to the inhumanity and injustice of Israel’s war in Gaza,” and “having an open heart to other people’s suffering is a fundamental human virtue” that should be modeled and taught to students “whatever their political posture may be.” Here in the U.S.A. one is free to disagree with this, but not, thankfully, free to railroad public employees by misrepresenting empathy and constitutionally protected political speech as bigotry. Kudos to Ms. Afsharian for the example she’s set for the Orange Schools community and more broadly.

05/01/2026

Here’s some excellent local journalism by Matt Richmond in a report published earlier this week at Ideastream that shows why Cuyahoga County voters should vote for Judge William Vodrey in next week’s Democratic primary. Our firm is significantly involved in this extraordinary story so we have a bit to say about it here.

Starting with the extraordinary fact that thirteen sitting Cuyahoga County judges from the Democratic party are up for re-election this year, and only one of them, Judge Vodrey, is facing a primary challenger. The reason for this, as Richmond’s report suggests, is that the County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley made Judge Vodrey a political target, and did so mainly due to Vodrey’s handling of the Antoine Tolbert/New Era case, wherein our firm obtained a complete acquittal on all fifteen charges against Tolbert and his two co-defendants after a five week jury trial over which the judge presided.

What’s so interesting and revealing about this story is the way O’Malley and certain others (but not all) in his office are so brazen in their desire to not only retaliate against Vodrey -- but also to have the public believe that the judge somehow treated the prosecution unfairly in the New Era case, which could hardly be further from the truth. In reality, as has been amply shown by the trial record and various articles published about this case (including as seen at this page, below), the prosecution’s pursuit of these charges was so obviously farcical and retaliatory that one could say that Judge Vodrey was, if anything, far too kind in his treatment of O’Malley’s office and witnesses in this case, including by letting any of the charges go to the jury in the first place.

We’d encourage anyone unfamiliar with this case to read up on this trial, which involved, among other irregularities: (1.) the prosecution’s attempt to obtain an “extortion” conviction against a prominent activist for what was obviously First Amendment-protected protest and boycott activity; (2.) a prior arrest and attempted prosecution against this very same activist that failed and resulted in the activist receiving an $85,000 settlement on a wrongful arrest claim; (3.) a lead detective who admitted on camera that he was excited to now “have something on” this activist to prosecute him in a subsequent case, referring specifically to the activist’s prior wrongful arrest and settlement; (4.) additional recorded admissions by this lead detective that his “biggest goal” with this prosecution was to ensure that the activist was no longer permitted to carry fi****ms, and also to no longer be permitted to “be around children”; (5.) an unimaginably clownish “star witness” and apparent police informant (run a quick internet search for the name “Rubin Swift” if you are curious) who was not only the primary instigator and ostensible “victim” of the false “extortion” charges, but also happened to be the very same person who reported the activist to the Cleveland Police in the incident leading to the prior wrongful arrest; (6.) the prosecution’s failure to preserve obviously relevant and surveillance footage that disproved the entire “extortion” narrative; (7.) the suspiciously timed and apparently retaliatory addition of extremely dubious charges against the co-defendants, who included his domestic partner, the mother of his then-four-year-old son, and a 19-year-old honor student at Cleveland State and former Ginn Academy class president who was a prominent member of the activist’s group, neither of whom had any criminal record; and (8.) the piling on of first-degree “kidnapping” and “aggravated robbery” charges for a functionally successful citizen’s arrest of a dealer selling drugs to children, where the prosecution tried to present the drug dealer as a “victim” of these felonies, and then had to arrest him and hold him in jail overnight to even get him to testify at the trial. After being dragged to the stand in handcuffs, this ostensible felony “victim” proceeded to plead the Fifth to almost all the prosecution’s questions, and otherwise completely embarrassed and undermined the prosecution to the jury’s obvious amusement and enlightenment (One of the few questions he answered was when the frustrated prosecutor asked him if he owned red pants, to which he dryly replied, “I have red pants on right now. There’s a lot people that own red pants.”).

There was a time in the Cuyahoga County Courthouse, not too long ago, where the idea of the prosecutor bringing charges like this would have been unthinkable; and where any given judge would have likely sharply rebuked the prosecution and possibly even removed them from the case had they tried to pull anything like what unfolded in the New Era trial. Setting aside for now any discussion of the structural changes to our political systems that have allowed the development of this new and deeply concerning state of affairs (which as anyone can see has affected our governmental processes at all levels all over this state and nation), it should suffice for now to take note of the fact that Mike O’Malley coming after Judge William Vodrey for, of all reasons, his mild-mannered and if anything too delicate handling of the prosecution’s antics in the New Era case, is nothing less than a spectacular demonstration of O’Malley’s unfitness for his office, and a clear admission that O’Malley prioritizes politics and power over the most basic principles of fairness, justice, and the rights guaranteed to all citizens by the Ohio and U.S. constitutions.

It should also be noted that there are many other recent developments out of O’Malley’s office supporting the same conclusion (not least being O'Malley's farcical handling of U.S. rep Max Miller's ridiculous false accusations against a certain Westlake doctor) — a conclusion that many in the Cuyahoga County courthouse, the local legal community, and County Democratic Party are reaching in increasing numbers — and which will likely be subject to future posts here.

But anyway, if you needed a reason to show up at the Cuyahoga County polls on Tuesday, Voting Vodrey is about as good of a reason as there's been in awhile. As Ben Franklin said, “a republic if we can keep it"!

Thanks as always for reading and supporting our firm and this page and please as always feel free to share this post and spread the word.

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