Tracie Hunter to get new trial on 8 charges

Tracie Hunter, the Juvenile Court judge and convicted felon, will go to trial again on the eight felony charges declared a mistrial last year when jurors couldn't reach a unanimous verdict on them.

"Judge Hunter and I are ready, willing and able to fight again," Clyde Bennett II, her trial attorney, said Wednesday.

The new trial will take place "definitely some time this year," Bennett said, but he hopes elsewhere.

"My goal is to not try the case in Hamilton County. I don't think she can get a fair trial here," Bennett said.

Hunter made the same argument last year before her criminal trial started, but Judge Norbert Nadel, who retired at the end of 2014, refused to move the case until it was determined during the September jury selection if a Hamilton County jury could be seated. It was seated with no issues. Both sides agreed to the same 12 jurors and six alternate jurors.

That jury convicted Hunter of one felony but couldn't reach a verdict on the other eight charges. Nadel declared a mistrial on those eight. After the case, Hunter unsuccessfully challenged the verdict, claiming three black jurors wanted to change their guilty verdict. She also unsuccessfully attacked the jury forewoman, who was molested by a pastor decades before, as being biased against Hunter, who is a pastor.

Hunter is appealing her conviction for having an unlawful interest in a public contract. She was convicted of using her position as a judge to provide documents used by her brother, Juvenile Court-employee Stephen Hunter, in a disciplinary hearing after he was fired for punching a teen inmate. She is appealing that conviction and six-month jail term Nadel handed down.

After that trial, Special Prosecutors R. Scott Croswell III and Merlyn Shiverdecker, who wouldn't comment Wednesday for this story, gave Hunter an ultimatum: Waive her rights to a speedy trial until her conviction appeal is resolved or go to trial on the other eight counts. Under Ohio law, prosecutors have a specific number of days to take the case against Hunter to trial or the charges are dismissed.

Hunter refused. "Judge Hunter is not willing to waive ... her Constitutional rights, including her right to a speedy trial," Bennett said.

That means prosecutors have to start the process to seek the second trial or the eight other charges against her – carrying a maximum prison sentence of 121/ 2 years in prison – will be dismissed.

They should be, Bennett said.

"They had their day in court," Bennett said of prosecutors. "They spent six weeks and hundreds of thousands of (taxpayer) dollars trying to convict her and they failed."

Actually, prosecutors won a felony conviction against the sitting judge. Hunter remains a judge in name but doesn't preside over cases and isn't being paid the $121,350 salary she made as judge.

Special prosecutors were paid about $450,000 to investigate and then prosecute the case against Hunter, something Bennett insisted was more of a persecution of Hamilton County's first black, female Juvenile Court judge than a prosecution.

"Fiscally," Bennett said, "from a taxpayer perspective, it's irresponsible. You are continuing to divide the community along racial lines. We have to heal."

Hunter was sentenced to six months in the Hamilton County Justice Center after her conviction. The Ohio Supreme Court, though, ruled Hunter could remain free until her appeal is resolved.

The case is next in court Wednesday before Common Pleas Court Judge Patrick Dinkelacker to select a trial date.

Allegations against Tracie Hunter

Hamilton County Juvenile Court Judge Tracie Hunter, already convicted of one felony, faces retrial on other eight felonies in three categories:

• Tampering with evidence and forgery: The "backdating" allegation. As a Juvenile Court judge, Hunter is accused of creating documents after the fact, but manipulating them in the computer system to make them appear as if they were filed earlier than they were. The result is prosecutors were prevented from appealing those rulings by Hunter. The alleged impact is she took sides in cases before her. She also is accused of signing the documents knowing they were incorrectly dated;

• Theft in Office: She is accused of using a county-issued credit card to pay for filings she made in court in cases where she had been sued;

• Unlawful Interest in a Public Contract: She is accused of helping her brother, then-Juvenile Court employee Steven Hunter, get overtime or pay. Elected officials aren't allowed to help relatives that way.