Posted on 06/18/2006 11:00:29 PM PDT by kenth
A Cuyahoga County judge threw out the charge against a man accused of raping a girl six years ago when the prosecutor in the case was 45 minutes late to trial.
Prosecutors have filed an appeal and said, if necessary, they will refile the charge against Norman Allen Craig, 22, of North Ridgeville.
The mother of the now 16-year-old Rocky River girl said her daughter feels victimized by the judge’s decision.
Common Pleas Judge Eileen Gallagher dismissed the case when Assistant County Prosecutor Mark Schneider had not shown up by 1:45 p.m. Monday, after she told both sides to be in court at 1 p.m.
Schneider was in his office preparing an appeal seeking to prevent the judge from continuing with the trial.
Earlier in the day, Schneider had asked the judge to remove herself from the case, saying the judge said last year that she thought the accuser had credibility problems.
“Nobody should be rendering opinions from the bench before trial,” Schneider said. “A child victim who’s being put through the wringer deserves a fair shake at trial.”
Gallagher said her decision to throw out the charge had nothing to do with the girl’s credibility.
“It was all about the unprofessional actions of a prosecutor,” she said. “You don’t show up — too bad. Don’t treat me like a punk and not show up in court without giving us the courtesy of notifying us where you are.”
County Prosecutor Bill Mason said calls were made to Gallagher’s office, and she should have been aware of Schneider’s pending arrival before deciding to throw out the case.
Judge hits alarm in county court fracas, but it doesn't work
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
James F. McCarty
Plain Dealer Reporter
A volatile sentencing hearing last week at the Cuyahoga County Justice Center has officials rethinking court security.
After Common Pleas Judge Eileen T. Gallagher sentenced a drug-trafficker to a year in prison, his mother started wailing, his brother rushed forward and chaos ensued.
A pair of deputies wrestled with the defendant and his brother as Gallagher punched the panic button beneath the bench to call reinforcements to her 23rd-floor courtroom. Only then did the judge recall a courthouse memo from two weeks before: The panic buttons on her floor and another were broken.
"It was a highly elevated, emotional and tense situation with the potential to get totally out of control," Gallagher said Monday.
She sent a letter to the Sheriff's Office -- which handles court security -- demanding action before a catastrophe occurred. And she got it.
Court Administrator Thomas Pokorny said he immediately called the panic button's vendor to repair the broken system, but was told the gizmo was obsolete and couldn't be fixed.
So he ordered a new, high-tech wireless alarm system that he hopes will be installed ASAP.
The county has agreed to pay the $50,000 cost pending receipt of federal grant money, said Administrative and Presiding Judge Nancy McDonnell.
"We were hoping we could obtain the funding and get by with the broken system until the new system arrived," Pokorny said.
"But after this incident, we decided to move forward with the work and get it installed as soon as they were capable of doing it."
Gallagher said the defendant in the case, Delonte Duvall, 27, of Cleveland, apologized to her for his family's conduct.
The judge found the defendant's 17-year-old brother guilty of contempt of court and sentenced him to 30 days in the juvenile detention center.
And Sandra Day is upset that we criticize judges?
This worthless turd should be stoned in a public square.
I am sorry, but a simple buzzer alarm would not cost that amount of money and any half assed stationary engineer could have cobbled together a button that would alarm in a remote location for a couple of hundred bucks and a short trip to radio shack or Home Depot. The high tech version could have been installed later.
Just another example of government run incompetence.
What does whether the defendant is guilty have to do with whether this should have happened??????????
NOTHING.
And yes, this is totally off the wall, I don't care how easy it is to refile.
It's just not right to put the TEN YEAR OLD RAPE VICTIM through this.
Mommy: well honey, there's not going to be a trial.
Child: what? what about later?
Mommy: maybe later, we don't know
Child: why Mom?
Mommy: Because the judge was kept waiting for a while
???????
What do you need - a button, a battery, some wire, and a door bell.
They're doing this basically for a bunch of lawyers. Maybe they were afraid they would be sued if the Radio Shack door bell jammed.
Mommy: because the nice gummint man was LATE to the court
would teach the daughter better about the real world.
lol / I think they both appear to be liberal democrat lesbians.
The courts are not about justice, they are simply courts of law.
Judges, seem to think they are bigger than the law and justice rarely enters their minds.
Most have an agenda, "pet" offenses they sentence harder than others and some offenses they simply ignore. The system is for the greater part broken.
The hearing was to review private records held by the Department of Children and Family Services and to give the judge a chance to question the victim.
Sims had hoped to use the records to aid in his client's defense, but the judge denied his request. That caused Sims to state his intention to try the case to the judge instead of a jury.
Schneider objected, citing a statement by the judge last November that she thought the victim "had credibility problems" and that the entire case rested on the victim's word."
This whole thing seems a bit strange
Reader's Digest has an article every year titled "America's worst judges." This judge should be in the running. Horrid woman.
They are supposedly not related and yet they have the same name and they graduated from the same high school and law school.
I was thinking the same thing. Whats with $50,000 dollars for something a kid could wire up? hell she could buy a childs monitor at radio Shack for less than 50 bucks.
It happens every day. It's how a lot of tickets etc. get "fixed". The cop doesn't show.
This is even worse; the prosecutor is the party who asked for the court's time in the first place. A no show is lack of prosecution, case dismissed.
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