What began as a seemingly innocuous request for a favor — one public official asking another for a paid internship for his son — has mushroomed into a call for an independent investigation and an end to the cronyism rampant in the Hamilton County courthouse.
Sitting at a makeshift table in front of the courthouse Wednesday, State Sen. Cecil Thomas, a Democrat, aired his displeasure with Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters in May giving an $11-an-hour internship to a son of Ohio Supreme Court Justice Pat DeWine. DeWine had asked Deters for the favor in an April 23 email obtained by CityBeat. DeWine has another, older son who spent his third year as a prosecutor’s intern. Deters also gave internships to the sons of local Republican honchos Alex Triantafilou and Charles “Chip” Gerhardt.
Thomas credited CityBeat with exposing the arrangement. “The story clearly, based on the emails, shows a relationship connection — and a collusion — between Joe Deters and Supreme Court Judge DeWine in getting the son a job,” he said.
Thomas said he would ask that Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor — a Republican like DeWine and Deters — to appoint a special prosecutor to determine if any laws or codes of professional conduct were violated. Thomas did not know who would best fill that role. Ohio’s top law enforcement official, Attorney General Mike DeWine, is Pat DeWine’s father.
“What we’re dealing with is a situation where nepotism and cronyism have gone on far too long,” he said. “So many people in our community who pay their taxes every day would like to know that their children have an opportunity just as all the individuals we see with family ties and friends of certain individuals.”
Adding impetus to Thomas’ call for an investigation was the episode’s similarity to one of the charges filed against former Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge Tracie Hunter in 2014. Hunter, a Democrat, was indicted on nine criminal counts, one for hiring a brother. That charge was dismissed, though Hunter was convicted on a related charge. After Thomas spoke, she stepped forward and called for Pat DeWine’s head.
“I absolutely believe that Pat DeWine should be investigated, prosecuted and sentenced to jail,” she said.
Thomas said that the requesting and granting of an internship for DeWine’s son Matt would seem to violate the state nepotism statute. That law, though, applies to the hiring of one’s own relatives or “business associates” by a public official. DeWine and Deters are not known to be in business together.
Moreover, a spokesman for the Ohio Supreme Court said the appointment of special prosecutors falls not to the chief justice but to courts of common pleas or appeals courts. Thomas said Monday he is making the same request of Hamilton County’s presiding Common Pleas Court Judge Melba Marsh.
The Ohio Supreme Court, however, does have a mechanism in place to deal with ethical violations by judges and lawyers. Its Office of Disciplinary Counsel investigates complaints for violations of ethical rules. If it finds sufficient grounds for wrongdoing, it will file a formal complaint with the high court’s Board of Professional Conduct, whose members are appointed by the Supreme Court. Based on that board’s findings, the Supreme Court can then “limit or prohibit the lawyer from practicing law or serving as a judge.”
Cassandra Robertson, director of the Center for Professional Ethics at Case Western Reserve University’s School of Law in Cleveland, says the state’s Code of Judicial Conduct would appear to provide guidance in the DeWine episode.
That code forbids judges and their family members from accepting gifts or things of value, but the exceptions are numerous. Better guidance, Robertson said, comes from the rule that says judges “shall not abuse the prestige of judicial office to advance the person or economic interests of the judge or others, or allow others to do so.” (Emphasis not added.)
“It’s definitely a troubling situation,” she says. “I think this kind of situation certainly gives rise to inquiry.”
DeWine has not responded to requests for comment. Deters, in a live interview with Bill Cunningham on WLW-AM, said no laws were broken in his intern hiring. He said he prefers to “have people in there that I trust.” He called CityBeat “trashy” and slammed Thomas as a hypocrite because Thomas vacated his City Council seat in 2013 and gave it to his wife.
“For him to defame the good name of the DeWine family makes me sick, because they would never, ever ask anyone to do anything improper,” Deters said. “Pat simply asked if we had room in my program — his son had worked there before — and I told (executive assistant) Janet, ‘Sure, make sure he gets invited to be an intern.’
“If he (Thomas) thinks that’s against the law … I don’t think Cecil Thomas knows dirt about being a prosecutor or what the law is.”
Because DeWine is a judge, he is governed by a higher ethical bar. He was elected to the Ohio Supreme Court last November after serving four years on the First District Court of Appeals in Cincinnati.
“The judicial ethics code requires judges to avoid the appearance of impropriety,” says Camille Wimbish, co-director of the Ohio Fair Courts Working Group in Columbus. “These rules exist because our judicial system relies on the public’s confidence that our courts are a fair playing field for all. When a Supreme Court justice asks a prosecutor for a favor, you can naturally expect the justice will someday return the favor. Ohioans should not have to question whether justice is being served in the state’s highest court.”
David Niven, a politics professor at the University of Cincinnati, boiled it down into spade-calling terms.
“The most fundamental currency in politics is not money; it’s favors,” he said. “DeWine asked for a favor, knowing full well he’d get one, and assumed the public would never hear of it. Either he will someday be called upon to pay that favor back, or he’s a modern-day Solomon, capable of clear, disinterested thinking that is totally unaffected by personal relationships.
“Justice DeWine asked for a favor,” he went on. “He asked for a favor from a person whose office will regularly appear before DeWine’s court seeking favorable judgments. Asking for a favor is a sloppy, partisan, political act from a person whose office is meant for people who are neither sloppy, partisan nor political.
“Even under the most generous interpretation here, DeWine asked for special treatment, and asking for special treatment is offense against what (former U.S. Supreme Court) Justice John Paul Stevens called the people’s ‘confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law.’ ”
CONTACT JAMES McNAIR: jmcnair@citybeat.com, 513-914-2736 or @jmacnews on Twitter
This article appears in Aug 16-23, 2017.
