Title: In re Disqualification of Cirigliano

State: ohio

Issuer: Ohio Supreme Court

Document:

[Cite as In re Disqualification of Cirigliano, 105 Ohio St.3d 1223, 2004-Ohio-7352.] 
 
 
IN RE DISQUALIFICATION OF CIRIGLIANO. 
STATE v. ROSS. 
[Cite as In re Disqualification of Cirigliano, 105 Ohio St.3d 1223, 
2004-Ohio-7352.] 
Judges — Affidavit of disqualification — Motion to dismiss — Validity of 
appointment of special prosecutor — Hearing not required before 
appointment, when – Motion to dismiss denied. 
(No. 04-AP-029 — Decided April 29, 2004.) 
ON AFFIDAVIT OF DISQUALIFICATION in Summit County Court of Common Pleas, 
case No. CR-1999-05-1098-A. 
____________________ 
 
MOYER, C.J. 
{¶ 1} Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys John R. 
Mitchell and Matthew E. Meyer have filed an affidavit with the Clerk of this court 
under R.C. 2701.03 seeking the disqualification of Judge Joseph Cirigliano from 
acting on any further proceedings in State of Ohio v. Denny F. Ross, case No. CR-
1999-05-1098-A in the Court of Common Pleas of Summit County. 
{¶ 2} Judge Cirigliano has responded to the affidavit by filing a motion 
asking that the affidavit be dismissed.  According to Judge Cirigliano, the 
circumstances surrounding the appointment of a special prosecutor for the Ross 
case three years ago now deprive the assistant prosecuting attorneys of any legal 
authority to appear on behalf of the government in this case.  The affidavit should 
therefore be dismissed, the judge claims. 
{¶ 3} For the reasons explained below, I now deny the judge’s motion to 
dismiss. 
Case Facts 
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{¶ 4} The sequence and timing of various events are relevant to the 
issues that Judge Cirigliano raises in his motion to dismiss, so a brief discussion 
of key events follows. 
{¶ 5} In the case before Judge Cirigliano, Denny Ross faces various 
felony charges in connection with the rape and murder of an Akron woman.  Ross 
was tried on the charges before a jury in Summit County in late 2000.  Judge Jane 
Bond presided.  While the jury was deliberating its verdicts, Judge Bond declared 
a mistrial amid rumors of juror misconduct. 
{¶ 6} Following that first trial, Ross’s defense counsel filed an affidavit 
of disqualification seeking the removal of Judge Bond from the case.  On January 
17, 2001, I concluded that Judge Bond should indeed step aside from the case 
because of the strong possibility that she might be called as a witness to testify 
about the actions that she took once she learned about the possible juror 
misconduct during the trial.  In re Disqualification of Bond (2001), 94 Ohio St.3d 
1221, 763 N.E.2d 593. 
{¶ 7} On January 26, 2001, Judge John R. Adams — who at the time 
was serving as the administrative judge on the Summit County Court of Common 
Pleas — asked Stark County Common Pleas Judge Richard D. Reinbold Jr. to 
take over the case.  That same day, Judge Adams wrote to this court, suggesting 
that Judge Reinbold be appointed to the case and explaining that a visiting judge 
was needed to hear the case “based on the recusal of all of the Summit County 
Common Pleas judges due to their colleague, Judge Jane Bond, being a potential 
witness in this case.” 
{¶ 8} On February 2, 2001, I appointed Judge Reinbold to hear the Ross 
case in Summit County, relying on my authority under Section 5(A)(3), Article IV 
of the Ohio Constitution, which gives me the power to assign judges to serve 
temporarily on courts other than their own when needed. 
January Term, 2004 
3 
{¶ 9} On February 21, 2001, the then newly elected Summit County 
Prosecuting Attorney, Sherri Bevan Walsh, filed a motion in the Ross case asking 
that the trial court appoint a special prosecutor for the retrial because she and her 
entire office had a conflict of interest in the case. 
{¶ 10} On March 5, 2001, Judge Reinbold wrote a letter to me requesting 
that he be permitted to resign his appointment in the Ross case.  My office 
received the letter on March 7, 2001.  In the letter, Judge Reinbold explained that 
the case appeared to be more procedurally complex and would likely be more 
time-consuming than he had first anticipated, and he was concerned that he would 
not be able to devote an appropriate amount of time to it, given his own heavy 
caseload in Stark County.  Judge Reinbold indicated in the letter that he had 
conveyed the same sentiments to Administrative Judge Adams on February 28, 
2001 and that Judge Adams had agreed then to request a new visiting judge to 
hear the case.  Finally, the letter indicated that Judge Adams was also searching 
for a special prosecutor to represent the government in the case. 
{¶ 11} On March 16, 2001, the judges of the Summit County Common 
Pleas Court, General Division, granted Prosecuting Attorney Walsh’s request that 
a special prosecutor be appointed to represent the government in the Ross case, 
and the judges appointed Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney William Mason 
to the post. 
{¶ 12} On March 23, 2001, I formally withdrew the assignment of the 
Ross case from Judge Reinbold, and I appointed Judge Cirigliano to handle the 
case.  Judge Cirigliano has presided over all trial court proceedings in the case 
during the past three years. 
{¶ 13} On March 15, 2004, Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys Mitchell and 
Meyer from Special Prosecuting Attorney Mason’s office filed the affidavit of 
disqualification here, alleging that Judge Cirigliano should now be removed from 
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the case because he has exhibited bias against the government and cannot preside 
fairly and impartially any longer. 
{¶ 14} On April 1, Judge Cirigliano filed a motion to dismiss, raising the 
three arguments that I now resolve as follows. 
First Issue:  The Selection of a Special Prosecutor by the Summit County 
Judges 
{¶ 15} Judge Cirigliano argues first that the appointment of a special 
prosecutor to the Ross case by the general-division common pleas judges in 
Summit County was improper because the judges who made the appointment had 
no authority to do so.  The key question that Judge Cirigliano presents is this:  Did 
Judge Adams and his Summit County colleagues have the authority to appoint a 
special prosecutor for the Ross case, given that they had recused themselves and 
given that Judge Reinbold was still at that point the assigned judge on the case 
(though he had by then asked to be permitted to withdraw)? 
{¶ 16} Court rules and past court decisions provide limited guidance on 
the issue.  To be sure, Sup.R. 4(B) states that  an administrative judge has “full 
responsibility and control over the administration, docket, and calendar of the 
court.”  And certainly, “[c]ourts of common pleas possess inherent power to 
appoint special prosecutors in criminal matters.”  State ex rel. Master v. Cleveland 
(1996), 75 Ohio St.3d 23, 27, 661 N.E.2d 180.  See, also, State v. Bunyan (1988), 
51 Ohio App.3d 190, 192, 555 N.E.2d 980 (where the duly elected prosecutor felt 
unable to carry out his prosecutorial duties against the defendant, the court of 
common pleas possessed the inherent power to appoint a special prosecutor). 
{¶ 17} Beyond those well-settled principles, the validity of the 
appointment of Prosecuting Attorney Mason as special prosecutor in the Ross 
case turns primarily on the sequence of events that occurred in early 2001.  
Having examined the existing record of those events, I conclude that the Summit 
January Term, 2004 
5 
County judges’ appointment of Prosecuting Attorney Mason as a special 
prosecutor for the Ross case on March 16, 2001 was and is valid. 
{¶ 18} Judge Reinbold was undeniably the assigned judge on the Ross 
case at the time of the Mason appointment, and the letter that Judge Reinbold sent 
to me on March 5, 2001, provides very helpful insights into the judge’s views 
about the appointment issue.  (In fairness to Judge Cirigliano, he may not be 
aware of that letter’s contents, and he has probably never seen it.) 
{¶ 19} That letter from Judge Reinbold reflects his assent to the search 
that Judge Adams was then conducting to find a special prosecutor for the case.  
As Judge Reinbold said in the letter, he had recently concluded after meeting with 
attorneys for both sides that it was “quite clear that a new prosecutor was 
mandatory.”  Judge Reinbold added, “We so advised Judge Adams, and he has 
attempted since then to enlist a special prosecutor from a number of different 
counties.” 
{¶ 20} From that language, it appears that Judge Reinbold — even while 
still assigned to the case — felt that Judge Adams as administrative judge ought to 
be the person to search for a special prosecutor.  The newly elected Summit 
County Prosecuting Attorney had asked that a special prosecutor be appointed, 
defense counsel had not objected to the prosecutor’s request, and Judge Reinbold 
evidently believed that Judge Adams, as administrative judge, should handle the 
job of locating a special prosecutor while Judge Reinbold continued to sort out the 
disputed legal issues that divided the parties.  Perhaps Judge Reinbold wanted to 
avoid any appearance of impropriety by leaving to another judge or group of 
judges the duty of selecting new counsel for the government while the case was 
pending before him.  In any event, Judge Reinbold appears to have concluded that 
a special prosecutor was needed, and he then left to Judge Adams the task of 
selecting that prosecutor. 
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{¶ 21} Though Administrative Judge Adams and his Summit County 
colleagues had voluntarily stepped aside from the case, and though Judge 
Reinbold had not formally been removed from the case on March 16, 2001, there 
is every reason to assume that Judge Reinbold welcomed the Summit County 
judges’ order appointing a special prosecutor on that day.  Neither he, nor defense 
counsel, nor Prosecuting Attorney Walsh raised any questions about the validity 
of the March 16, 2001 appointment of Prosecuting Attorney Mason as special 
prosecutor, and none of them appear to have raised any concerns about the 
appointment since then. 
{¶ 22} As for Judge Cirigliano, he too appears to have accepted the 
validity of the appointment for more than three years after it occurred.  The order 
granting the motion and appointing William Mason as special prosecutor was part 
of the case file when Judge Cirigliano took over the case.  If he had any concerns 
about the ruling or its validity, he could have raised them then, vacated the order, 
and issued his own ruling on Prosecuting Attorney Walsh’s motion.  He did not 
do so. 
{¶ 23} Ohio’s affidavit-of-disqualification statute provides some guidance 
on the question.  See R.C. 2701.03.  To be sure, no affidavit of disqualification 
had been filed against Judge Adams or his Summit County colleagues (aside from 
Judge Bond).  Still, all of those judges chose to step aside from the Ross case in 
2001 in much the way that judges are required to do whenever such an affidavit of 
disqualification is filed against them.  R.C. 2701.03 provides that while an 
affidavit of disqualification is pending before the Chief Justice, the affected judge 
is still entitled to “determine a matter that does not affect a substantive right of 
any of the parties.”  R.C. 2701.03(D)(3).  In a case applying that provision, one 
court has said that a judge against whom an affidavit of disqualification was 
pending could still “act in a ministerial capacity” and therefore did not act 
improperly when he held a pretrial conference and scheduled a trial before a 
January Term, 2004 
7 
visiting judge.  Evans v. Dayton Newspapers, Inc. (1989), 57 Ohio App.3d 57, 58, 
566 N.E.2d 704. 
{¶ 24} In this case, Judge Adams and the other Summit County judges 
who had voluntarily recused themselves took it upon themselves — at the request 
of Judge Reinbold — to resolve an issue that neither party to the case appears to 
have viewed as one that affected the parties’ substantive rights.  The judges’ 
appointment of Prosecuting Attorney Mason as special prosecutor — at least 
where Prosecuting Attorney Walsh’s February 21, 2001 motion was unopposed, 
and where Judge Reinbold agreed with it and had asked Judge Adams to select a 
special prosecutor — can rightly be described as a permissible ministerial action.  
That act of appointing William Mason as special prosecutor for the retrial of the 
case neither undercut Judge Reinbold’s authority as the assigned judge nor 
compromised the Summit County judges’ decision to leave to a visiting judge the 
task of deciding any substantive legal disputes between the parties after Judge 
Bond was disqualified. 
{¶ 25} While the Summit County judges’ act of appointing a special 
prosecutor was proper in these circumstances, the fact that the parties have for 
more than three years relied on the validity of that appointment is itself important.  
A prompt objection to the appointment was essential if that appointment was to be 
undone.  In analogous circumstances — involving an administrative judge’s 
allegedly improper reassignment of a case to a new judge — one court has 
explained the importance of raising a timely challenge to the administrative 
judge’s action: 
{¶ 26} “[A]ny party objecting to a reassignment must raise that objection 
at the first opportunity to do so.  If the party has knowledge of the transfer with 
sufficient time to object before the new judge takes any action, that party waives 
any objection to the transfer by failing to raise that issue on the record before the 
action is taken.  If the party first learns about the transfer after action is taken by 
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
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the new judge, the party waives any objection to the transfer by failing to raise 
that issue within a reasonable time thereafter.”  Berger v. Berger (1981), 3 Ohio 
App.3d 125, 131, 3 OBR 141, 443 N.E.2d 1375. 
{¶ 27} Though no document listed on the official docket for the Ross case 
appears to have memorialized the decision of the Summit County judges to recuse 
themselves in early 2001, Judge Cirigliano surely knew in March 2001 of that 
recusal, for he knew that I had turned first to a Stark County judge, and then to 
Judge Cirigliano himself — a Lorain County resident — to preside over the Ross 
retrial.  Judge Adams would not have asked for either of those visiting-judge 
appointments had any Summit County judges been willing to handle the case.  In 
short, the Summit County judges’ voluntary recusal was evident to the parties and 
to Judge Cirigliano long before Judge Cirigliano challenged just weeks ago the 
March 16, 2001 appointment of the special prosecutor. 
{¶ 28} Also, the March 16, 2001 order signed by Judge Adams and his 
Summit County colleagues was the most recent paper in the court file when Judge 
Cirigliano took over the case on March 23, 2001.  Any objection to the previous 
week’s order could have been raised and addressed right away, but instead Judge 
Cirigliano has waited three years to bring up the issue, and he has done so only 
when attorneys from the special prosecutor’s office have asked that he be 
removed from the case. 
{¶ 29} Given that Judge Adams and his colleagues acted on Prosecuting 
Attorney Walsh’s motion on March 16, 2001, with the full knowledge and 
apparent concurrence of Judge Reinbold, given that Judge Reinbold had 
expressed his desire to step off the case several days earlier, given that the 
appointment of a special prosecutor could rightly be regarded as the kind of 
ministerial act that did not affect the substantive rights of the parties (and did not 
draw any objections from them), given that Judge Cirigliano had full notice if not 
full knowledge about the publicly filed order issued by the Summit County judges 
January Term, 2004 
9 
one week before his appointment to the case, and given that Judge Cirigliano 
never attempted to revisit the ruling on the appointment of the special prosecutor 
until three years after the order was issued, I reject Judge Cirigliano’s claim that a 
defect in the appointment of the special prosecutor now invalidates the affidavit of 
disqualification filed by the assistant prosecuting attorneys from Special 
Prosecuting Attorney Mason’s office. 
Second Issue:  The Failure to Hold a Hearing on the Appointment of the 
Special Prosecutor 
{¶ 30} Judge Cirigliano argues next that before the general-division 
common pleas judges in Summit County appointed William Mason as a special 
prosecutor for the retrial of the case, they should have held a hearing into whether 
a special prosecutor was needed. 
{¶ 31} A hearing is indeed required when an attorney for a party to a case 
does not want to be disqualified or when an attorney’s law firm wishes to 
continue representation despite that attorney’s conflict of interest.  See, e.g., Kala 
v. Aluminum Smelting & Refining Co., Inc. (1998), 81 Ohio St.3d 1, 688 N.E.2d 
258, syllabus; State v. Condon, 152 Ohio App.3d 629, 2003-Ohio-2335, 789 
N.E.2d 696.  See, also, State v. Durbin (App.1935), 20 Ohio Law Abs. 299, 1935 
WL 1907 (where prosecuting attorney was neither notified nor given opportunity 
to be heard, appointment of  special prosecutor was void); State v. Wiles (1998), 
126 Ohio App.3d 71, 82, 83, 709 N.E.2d 898 (trial court should have held hearing 
and allowed the state to rebut criminal defendant’s claim that entire prosecutor’s 
office had to be disqualified when one assistant prosecutor had represented 
defendant in same case). 
{¶ 32} Yet no such hearing is needed when the prosecuting attorney asks 
for and agrees to the appointment of a special prosecutor.  The hearing described 
in the cases listed above is designed to give the prosecutor an opportunity to 
contest the appointment of a special prosecutor, or, more generally, to give 
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attorneys the opportunity to argue that they can still represent a client when an 
opposing party moves to disqualify or to allow an attorney’s law firm to continue 
to represent a client even though that one attorney in the firm or office cannot do 
so.  This court has held that a hearing is necessary when a prosecuting attorney is 
the subject of the investigation and has not consented to the appointment of other 
counsel.  State ex rel. Thomas v. Henderson (1931), 123 Ohio St. 474, 478, 175 
N.E. 865.  But this court has explained that generally, “The [trial] court has the 
discretion to appoint counsel to assist the prosecuting attorney in a pending 
criminal case whenever it is of the opinion that the public interest so requires.  
There is no requirement that it conduct a prior hearing into the disqualification of 
the prosecuting attorney.”  (Emphasis added.)  State ex rel. Williams v. Zaleski 
(1984), 12 Ohio St.3d 109, 113, 12 OBR 153, 465 N.E.2d 861. 
{¶ 33} In Williams, as in this case, the prosecuting attorney had asked that 
a special prosecutor be appointed.  See, also, State ex rel. Stahl v. Webster 
(App.1933), 15 Ohio Law Abs. 508 (where prosecuting attorney advised court 
that he did not wish to investigate or prosecute a particular case and that he 
consented to the appointment of other counsel, “no further notice of hearing to the 
prosecuting attorney was necessary”). 
{¶ 34} In this case, newly elected Summit County Prosecuting Attorney 
Sherri Bevan Walsh filed a motion in the trial court in February 2001 asking that 
a special prosecutor be appointed.  The general-division common pleas judges 
granted that motion on March 16, 2001, and appointed William Mason to serve as 
special prosecutor.  No hearing was necessary before the judges did so, and 
nothing about that appointment process undercuts the validity of Mason’s actions 
since then. 
Third Issue:  The Participation of Prosecuting Attorney Mason’s Assistants in 
the Prosecution of the Case 
January Term, 2004 
11 
{¶ 35} Finally, Judge Cirigliano argues that even if the appointment of 
William Mason was proper, the assistant prosecuting attorneys in Mason’s office 
have no authority to appear on behalf of the government in the case, because the 
order appointing a special prosecutor mentions only Mason’s name. 
{¶ 36} There is little guidance in past court decisions on this point, but 
R.C. 309.06 does say that “[t]he prosecuting attorney may appoint any assistants * 
* * who are necessary for the proper performance of the duties of his office * * * 
.”  Those words are not directed toward a prosecuting attorney’s service as a 
special prosecutor, but they do suggest that a prosecuting attorney is entitled to 
determine whether assistants are needed in his or her office and to make those 
appointments whenever necessary.  Just as the Revised Code contemplates that 
prosecuting attorneys will hire and rely on assistant prosecuting attorneys to take 
on much of the day-to-day work in busy government offices, so I think it fair to 
say that the Summit County judges who appointed him expected Special 
Prosecuting Attorney Mason to decide how to staff the Ross case.  He was 
appointed to represent the government in the case, and just as he decides which 
cases, if any, he himself will handle directly in Cuyahoga County, so he was 
entitled by the March 16, 2001 Summit County judges’ order to decide how best 
to staff the Ross case in Summit County. 
{¶ 37} And as with the other concerns raised by Judge Cirigliano in his 
motion to dismiss, the long passage of time undercuts whatever weight his 
arguments might otherwise carry.  Judge Cirigliano has presided over the Ross 
case since March 2001.  During the three years since his appointment, the judge 
has never raised any concerns about the authority of the assistant prosecuting 
attorneys to appear on behalf of the government in the Ross case.  The order 
appointing Special Prosecuting Attorney Mason was, as noted above, the most 
recent document in the case file when Judge Cirigliano was assigned to the case.  
Any concerns about that order’s meaning could have been raised long ago.  
SUPREME COURT OF OHIO 
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Instead, Judge Cirigliano has allowed assistant prosecuting attorneys from 
William Mason’s office to appear at many court hearings and file many motions 
and memoranda.  The judge has never questioned the assistant prosecuting 
attorneys’ right to do so, and defense counsel has never objected, either. 
{¶ 38} For those reasons, I disagree with Judge Cirigliano’s third 
argument in his motion to dismiss the pending affidavit of disqualification. 
{¶ 39} I am mindful that the “ ‘constitutional and statutory responsibility 
of the Chief Justice in ruling on an affidavit of disqualification is limited to 
determining whether a judge in a pending case has a bias, prejudice, or other 
disqualifying interest that mandates the judge’s disqualification from that case.’ ”  
In re Disqualification of Griffin, 101 Ohio St.3d 1219, 2003-Ohio-7356, 803 
N.E.2d 820, ¶ 9, quoting In re Disqualification of Kate (1999), 88 Ohio St.3d 
1208, 1209, 723 N.E.2d 1098.  The arguments that Judge Cirigliano has raised in 
his motion to dismiss do not touch on the kind of bias-and-prejudice inquiry that I 
must ultimately conduct in this and any other case in which an affidavit of 
disqualification has been filed.  I have nonetheless carefully reviewed the merits 
of the judge’s arguments in order to resolve the serious concerns that his motion 
raises about the validity of the special-prosecutor appointment process in the Ross 
case. 
{¶ 40} For the reasons explained above, the motion to dismiss is denied. 
____________________