The Plain Dealer
Editorial Board
Un-railroaded, finally
A special prosecutor is claiming victory in the resolution of the case of two female employees at the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections who almost did 18 months of hard time for low-level crimes related to a recount of the 2004 presidential vote.
Don't believe him.
Because this case just wouldn't go away, it had become a public relations problem for special prosecutor Kevin Baxter, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason and Common Pleas Judge Peter Corrigan.
In March, board employees Jacqueline Maiden and Kathleen Dreamer, two women without a blemish on their records, were convicted of a role in gaming the 2004 recount in Cuyahoga County. For this, Corrigan gave them each an 18-month prison sentence.
A few months later, Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Moyer removed Corrigan from the case, ruling that some of the judge's conduct carried the taint of impropriety. In August, Common Pleas Judge Shirley Strickland Saffold, quoting from Moyer's opinion, threw out the conviction and ordered a new trial.
With that trial scheduled to begin this week, the prosecutor decided to claim victory and walk away. On Monday, Dreamer and Maiden accepted a deal that will allow them to receive probation with no admission of wrongdoing. If they break no laws within six months, the whole thing disappears.
Baxter, who is Erie County's elected prosecutor, called the result satisfactory because "at the end of the day, these two ladies took some responsibility for their actions."
Dreamer's attorney, Roger Synenberg, disagreed. "That might be Kevin's spin on this, but that's not the way it was. If that had been a condition of this plea, we would've gone to trial. They're not accepting responsibility, because they didn't do anything wrong."
A lot of people worked really hard at sticking these two women in a cell for a very long time. This week's result was the right one, although it came more than a year too late.
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