Tracie Hunter to judge: Get off my case
Tracie Hunter wants Ohio's Supreme Court to ensure that no Hamilton County judge presides over the retrial of criminal charges against her.
The original trial last year was before Judge Norbert Nadel, but he retired at the end of the year. Voters elected Patrick Dinkelacker to replace Nadel, but Dinkelacker last year sat on the appeals court that ruled several times against Hunter in lawsuits brought against her. Some of Dinkelacker's rulings were presented as evidence at her first trial, something Hunter's attorney, Clyde Bennett II, told the Ohio Supreme Court requires them to remove Dinkelacker from Hunter's case.
Dinkelacker declined comment Wednesday.
"I have no problem with Judge Dinkelacker. I think he's a fair judge," Bennett said.
The issue, he added, was to do all he could to make sure Hunter gets a fair trial.
That's why he also asked that all Hamilton County judges be barred from hearing her case because of the coziness of the bench and others in the justice system.
"In order to avoid the appearance of impropriety due to the close relationship between all Hamilton County Common Pleas judges and key witnesses – including sitting judges, a County Commissioner, the Chief Public Defender, and the Hamilton County Prosecutor – ... Hunter asks that the Court appoint a judge from outside Hamilton County," documents filed Wednesday note.
Hunter was convicted of one felony in her trial last fall, but the other eight were declared mistrials after jurors couldn't reach a unanimous verdict. Those charges are scheduled for a June 1 retrial.
This isn't the first time Bennett asked Dinkelacker to step down from the case.
Hunter was re-indicted on one of the original charges – a paperwork issue to fix a defect in the original indictment that prevented jurors from hearing evidence of one of the misuse of credit card charges. In January, Bennett asked Dinkelacker during a hearing to step down. Dinkelacker declined, telling Bennett he would be fair and impartial.
Few in the Hamilton County justice system, Bennett countered, have been fair and impartial to Hunter.
"One of the underlying themes of the state's case was that Judge Hunter refused to follow rules and had to be repeatedly sued in the First District Court of Appeals (where Dinkelacker was a judge) and held in contempt by that Court," Bennett wrote in Wednesday's Supreme Court filing.
"To support this alleged conflict, the state claimed Judge Hunter was 'upset' with the Court of Appeals, and there were 'hard feelings between Judge Hunter and the Court of Appeals' and 'the Court of Appeals had been routinely overturning her decisions.' "
Prosecutors, Bennett added, read several of those appeals court decisions to jurors trying to prove their case in Hunter's trial. That included the entry where the appeals court found Hunter in contempt for refusing to let The Enquirer into a public courtroom after it told her she must. One of the judges who signed that contempt order was Dinkelacker, Bennett noted.
Hunter was elected in 2010 but only after winning a controversial lawsuit that required previously uncounted votes to be counted. That suit allowed Hunter, who initially was declared the loser of the 2010 election, to earn extra votes that made her the election winner. Because of the lawsuit, she didn't take the bench until 18 months after that election.
She's also requested several times – but been denied – to move the case out of Hamilton County, insisting she can't get a fair trial.
Hunter was convicted of using her position as a judge to get documents her brother, a Juvenile Court worker fired for punching a teen inmate in the face, later used in a disciplinary hearing. Nadel sentenced her to six months in the county jail but she was allowed to remain free while appealing her case. She's also accused of forgery and manipulating court documents in cacses before her to hurt prosecution cases.