Jalowiec case gets new judge
By KAYLEE REMINGTON
The Morning Journal
ELYRIA — Ohio Supreme Court Justice Maureen O’Connor has selected a visiting judge for Stanley Jalowiec’s case, after Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge was removed from the case last week.
Visiting Judge Virgil Lee Sinclair Jr., a retired judge from Stark County will preside over the case, according to the certificate of assignment filed yesterday.
Jalowiec’s attorney, Kim Rigby, could not be reached for comment.
Jalowiec’s case had been halted last month after Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Anthony Cillo asked the Supreme Court to remove Burge from his cases including Jalowiec; Shannon Weber, a former Lorain County Jail nurse from Wellington accused of trying to kill her son; and Albert Fine, charged with the murder of his, Catherine “Kat” Hoholski, in July 2012 and who faces the death penalty if convicted.
O’Connor had disqualified Burge from the Jalowiec case, but he can remain on the Fine and Weber cases.
O’Connor also denied Cillo’s request for Burge to be disqualified from all of Cillo’s cases.
According to the decision, Cillo has claimed that his “complex and often contentious history” with Burge, combined with recent public comments by Burge involving Cillo’s involvement in an alleged disciplinary investigation of Burge, has created impropriety.
Cillo recently submitted an affidavit from Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Nick Hanek who stated that Burge said to him, “he (Cillo) thinks that I would make a ruling based on him when there’s a man (convicted killer Stanley Jalowiec) who certainly deserves a new trial ...”
Burge has denied making the statement stating he never expressed his thinking in Jalowiec’s case. Jalowiec, from Elyria, is a death row inmate asking for a new trial, claiming evidence favorable to him was withheld by prosecutor’s during his trial.
O’Connor wrote Burge did not rest with just submitting a response to Cillo’s affidavit, but has commented to the media about Cillo’s allegations which then “triggered the filing of Cillo’s supplemental affidavit with more allegations of bias and prejudice against the judge.”
The result has been a public dispute and could cause someone to believe that Burge has become “Cillo’s adversary,” thereby making a possibly “intolerable atmosphere” in the courtroom, wrote O’Connor.
The media statements aren’t the sole factor of disqualifying Burge. O’Connor wrote that Burge also did not respond to some of the allegations in Cillo’s supplemental affidavit, which include a claim that Burge “discarded the traditional route of reassignment in Jalowiec’s case in order to preside over the case himself.”
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