Supreme Court of Ohio Clerk of Court - Filed July 02, Case No NO. IN THE SUPREME COURT OF OHIO

Transcription

1 Supreme Court of Ohio Clerk of Court - Filed July 02, Case No NO. IN THE SUPREME COURT OF OHIO APPEAL FROM THE COURT OF APPEALS FOR CUYAHOGA COUNTY, OHIO NO Counsel for Defendant-Appellee R. BRIAN MORIARTY 2000 Standard Building 1370 Ontario Street Cleveland, OH (216) STATE OF OHIO, Plaintiff-Appellant -vs- MICHAEL BRELO, Defendant-Appellee MEMORANDUM IN SUPPORT OF JURISDICTION Counsel for Plaintiff-Appellant TIMOTHY J. MCGINTY CUYAHOGA COUNTY PROSECUTOR /s/ Timothy J. McGinty Timothy J. McGinty ( ) Cuyahoga County Prosecutor The Justice Center 1200 Ontario Street Cleveland, Ohio (216)

2 TABLE OF CONTENTS EXPLANATION OF WHY THIS FELONY CASE INVOLVES A SUBSTANTIAL CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION OR ISSUE OF GREAT PUBLIC INTEREST... 1 STATEMENT OF THE CASE AND FACTS... 5 LAW AND ARGUMENT... 6 STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW I: A defendant is not required to be the sole cause of the victim s death where the defendant and others, working together, each inflict mortal wounds STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW II: Whether a police officer is reasonable in his use of deadly force must be determined from an objective, rather than a subjective, test STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW III: The Lesser-included offenses of Voluntary Manslaughter include Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter and Aggravated Assault, but not Felonious Assault STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW IV: R.C (A) allows the State to appeal any other decision by a trial court except the final verdict. There is no requirement that the decision be on a novel legal issue CONCLUSION CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE APPENDIX Order and Journal Entry Dismissing Appeal, State v. Brelo, 8 th Dist. Cuyahoga No (June 30, 2015)..A-1 Judgment Entry of Verdict After a Bench Trial and Opinion, State v. Brelo, 8 th Dist. Cuyahoga No. CR A (May 30, 2015)...A-3 i

3 EXPLANATION OF WHY THIS FELONY CASE INVOLVES A SUBSTANTIAL CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION OR ISSUE OF GREAT PUBLIC INTEREST This is a case that, if left to stand, fundamentally skews Ohio law regarding causation in criminal cases, creates untenable standards in police excessive force cases, upends the analysis of lesser-included offenses, and makes irrelevant the State s ability to appeal erroneous rulings in a criminal case pursuant to R.C (A). For these reasons, the State of Ohio asks this Court to accept jurisdiction of its propositions of law and restore order and reason to the criminal justice system. This appeal arises from the trial court s error in applying the law in rendering a verdict in the trial of Michael Brelo, a Cleveland Police Officer who fired 49 shots into two unarmed suspects following a police chase that lasted over 20 minutes, 20 miles, and reached speeds of over 100 MPH. After a month-long trial to the bench on two counts of voluntary manslaughter, the trial court reached a not-guilty verdict by finding that Brelo was justified under law in the number, manner, and method in which he fired multiple bullets into Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. The trial court issued a 33-page verdict that has been widely circulated and highly publicized. Because of this, errors in the law stated in the verdict carry a great risk of being relied upon throughout courts in Ohio. The issues involved in this case are not sui generis or incapable of repetition they are salient and, as recognized by the trial court, are not singular, as there are other publicized cases where police may be investigated for and prosecuted for the use of excessive force. These incidents include the recent police shootings that have occurred in Ferguson, Missouri and North Charleston, South Carolina, as well as the deaths of unarmed citizens at the hands of police in New York City and Baltimore, Maryland. The trial court 1

4 specifically noted the recent police shooting in Cleveland, Ohio, where a 12-year-old boy was shot and killed by a police officer, in announcing its verdict. Appendix, at p. A-4. Because of this, this Court should accept jurisdiction to correct error in the law as written in the verdict and to ensure that justice is applied equally throughout Ohio. In its verdict, the trial court found that Russell and Williams both received fatal wounds from Brelo; but it found that other officers, whose actions were justified, also inflicted mortal wounds, thus errantly ruling that the State of Ohio did not prove that Brelo would otherwise be liable for causing Russell and Williams s deaths. But the law in Ohio is the opposite - where multiple actors independently inflict wounds that would in and of themselves cause death, each actor is responsible for their actions. To hold otherwise would allow for criminal defendants in homicide cases to successfully plead innocence because their victims would have died anyway. That was the law applied in this case, and it cannot be the law applied in others. Thus, it is necessary to correct this misstatement and improper application of law and prevent the error from infecting further trials and the State asks this Court to accept the following proposition of law: STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW I: A defendant is not required to be the sole cause of the victim s death where the defendant and others, working together, each inflict mortal wounds. In addition to upending the law of causation in criminal cases, the trial court s verdict flips the standard of review in an excessive force case from United States Supreme Court holdings that such review is to be determined objectively from the perspective of a reasonable police officer, to one that includes the subjective beliefs of the officer on trial. This Court should therefore accept jurisdiction over the State s second proposition of law: 2

5 STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW II: Whether a police officer is reasonable in his use of deadly force must be determined from an objective, rather than a subjective, test. In addition to creating a law of criminal causation that allows defendants to evade responsibility by claiming the victim would have died anyway, and where police may use a subjective defense to charges of excessive force, the trial court created new lesser offenses in the criminal law of this State where it ignored the crime of attempt and further ignored established law defining what is lesser and/or inferior offenses of voluntary manslaughter. Ohio case law has clarified that an attempt is a lesser offense of the charged offense for purposes of Crim.R. 31(C) and R.C But the court s verdict does not recognize this crime it omits consideration of it altogether. This is an error that could permeate and infect all future trials in that courtroom and allow criminals to escape responsibility for their actions. Further compounding these errors of law, the trial court ignored the fact that, outside of Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter, the only other legally permissible lesser-included offense of Voluntary Manslaughter is Aggravated Assault under R.C That offense was not considered by the trial court in its verdict. The offense of Aggravated Assault is distinguished from Voluntary Manslaughter by the absence or failure to prove that Brelo caused the death of, rather than merely serious physical harm to, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. Instead of applying the law as stated by this Court, the trial court determined Felonious Assault to be a lesser-included offense of Voluntary Manslaughter. This is contrary to the Evans test for lesser included offenses and, by law, Felonious Assault is a superior offense to Voluntary Manslaughter. And superior offenses cannot be charged absent a re-indictment in which the Grand Jury finds probable cause for the greater charge. This conclusion of law in the verdict must be corrected and the trial court must not be able to compound its error in the future such 3

6 error could lead to unconstitutional convictions by juries and the State asks this Court to accept its third proposition of law: STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW III: The Lesser-included offenses of Voluntary Manslaughter include Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter and Aggravated Assault, but not Felonious Assault. Finally, the Eighth District Court of Appeals, in its opinion denying leave to appeal, compounds the trial court s errors and renders these errors and all future errors in criminal trials that result in acquittal - incapable of review and correction. In its opinion denying the State of Ohio leave, the appellate court creates a standard of review of Bistricky appeals that negates the purpose of such appeals. It denied the appeal because the trial court s errors were not novel, and because the errors contravened established case law, they would be incapable of repetition. This circular reasoning in the denial is evidence of the court s abuse of its discretion in denying leave to appeal. The court did not exercise discretion in its denial, rather, it created standards of review which ensure that future attempts to appeal legal rulings by the State will be denied especially in cases where the trial court ignores precedent. Because the appellate court created standards that cannot be met by the State in any appeal, it has arbitrarily created a de facto bar to the State s ability to appeal legal error in a criminal trial that ends in acquittal. For this reason, the State asks this Court to accept its fourth assignment of law: STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW IV: R.C (A) allows the State to appeal any other decision by a trial court except the final verdict. There is no requirement that the decision be on a novel legal issue. If left to stand, the trial court s verdict will endanger the public, allow defendants to escape culpability, and lead to more unnecessary deaths by police-created crossfire situations. Because the verdict itself contains errors in law, errors in analysis, and misstatements of clearly 4

7 established law, this Court should accept jurisdiction of this case. If the errors are left uncorrected, the future administration of justice is compromised: Criminal actors will evade responsibility for their actions, jurists and juries could enter unconstitutional verdicts, and police officers in Cuyahoga County will have defenses to their actions in use of force cases that are not recognized by established law. Moreover, the appellate court determined such errors cannot be reviewed if they are not novel. For these reasons, this Court should accept jurisdiction and ensure that the law is uniform throughout Ohio as to causation, use of force by police, consistent with logic and reason in evaluation of lesser-included and inferior offenses by jurists and juries alike, and that appellate courts can determine error by jurists on the common pleas bench, novel or not. STATEMENT OF THE CASE AND FACTS The facts of this case have never been disputed. Michael Brelo, a Cleveland police officer, participated in the now-infamous Cleveland Police Chase of November 29, 2012 in which 62 police cars and more than 100 officers chased a 1979 Chevy Malibu more than 20 miles through the streets of Cleveland and East Cleveland. It is undisputed that the chase ended in the parking lot of a school, when the officers surrounded the Malibu and fired 137 shots at the two unarmed occupants inside, Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. It is undisputed that Russell and Williams were shot 47 times. It is undisputed that Brelo climbed onto the hood of the Malibu, reloaded his weapon for a second time, and then fired the final 15 shots into Russell and Williams from point-blank range. On May 30, 2014, the Cuyahoga County Grand Jury indicted Michael Brelo, the Defendant-Appellee herein, on two counts of Voluntary Manslaughter for the shooting deaths of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. The case proceeded to a bench trial before Judge John 5

8 P. O Donnell, and at the conclusion of that trial, Judge O Donnell issued a 33-page verdict finding Brelo not guilty on all counts. The State filed a Motion for Leave to Appeal a slew of substantive legal errors in the trial court s decision pursuant to R.C (A). On June 30, 2015, the Eighth District Court of Appeals denied the State s motion for leave. State v. Brelo, 8th Dist. No , Motion No Now before this Honorable Court is the State s request that this Court accept discretionary jurisdiction and reverse the Eighth District s decision to deny the State leave to appeal substantive legal issues in the trial court s verdict. LAW AND ARGUMENT STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW I: A defendant is not required to be the sole cause of the victim s death where the defendant and others, working together, each inflict mortal wounds. In acquitting Brelo, the trial court found that Brelo shot both Russell and Williams and that those shots were fatal wounds. Appendix, at p. A-22, 27. This should have been sufficient, by itself, to satisfy the State s burden of proof on the element of causation. Cause occurs when the physical harm is the natural and foreseeable result of the act or failure to act. There may be more than one cause. The defendant is responsible for the natural consequences of the defendant's unlawful act or failure to act, even though physical harm to person and property was also caused by the intervening act or failure to act of another person. If the defendant s act or failure to act was one cause, the existence of other causes is not a defense in this case. OJI ; See also State v. Banks, 8th Dist. No , 2000 WL , *20 ( injuries need not be the sole cause of death as long as they constitute a substantial factor for the death ). Thus, a person who inflicts a fatal wound is the cause of the victim s death, regardless of whether he acted together with other people who did the same, as long as his conduct was a substantial factor in the victim s death. This Court recognized this principle as the law in Ohio in State v. Phillips, 74 Ohio St.3d 72, 80, 1995-Ohio-171, 656 N.E.2d 643: [A]ppellant cannot escape criminal liability by arguing that [the victim] was going to die anyway. 6

9 But the trial court then found that it could not convict Brelo of Voluntary Manslaughter unless it found that Russell and Williams would have lived but for Brelo s actions. Appendix, at p This required the State to prove that there were no other fatal wounds inflicted upon the victims an impossibility in cases in which multiple actors shoot the victim simultaneously. To support this, the trial court relied upon a misreading of the Supreme Court of the United States decision in Burrage v. United States, --- U.S. ---, 134 S.Ct. 881, 187 L.Ed.2d 715 (2014), interpreting an unrelated federal drug statute. But Burrage, by its own language, does not require but-for causation in homicide cases: [T]he undoubted reality [is] that courts have not always required strict but-for causality, even where criminal liability is at issue. The most common (though still rare) instance of this occurs when multiple sufficient causes independently, but concurrently, produce a result. See Nassar, supra, at 133 S. Ct. 2517, 186 L. Ed. 2d 503 at 513; see also LaFave 467 (describing these cases as unusual and numerically in the minority ). To illustrate, if A stabs B, inflicting a fatal wound; while at the same moment X, acting independently, shoots B in the head... also inflicting [a fatal] wound; and B dies from the combined effects of the two wounds, A will generally be liable for homicide even though his conduct was not a but-for cause of B s death (since B would have died from X s actions in any event). Id., at 468 (italics omitted). Id., at 890. The Supreme Court ultimately chose not to apply this type of causation requirement to the facts of the Burrage case because there was no evidence that the victim s use of heroin was an independently sufficient cause of his death. Id. Here, the trial court did find that Brelo s shooting of Russell and Williams was an independently sufficient cause of both of their deaths, and that should have been all that was required. The implication of the trial court s causation ruling is that if five gang members surround a victim and each fatally shoot him simultaneously, none of them can be said to have caused his death because none of them, alone, fired a shot without which the victim would have survived. No one is responsible because everyone is responsible. This is not, and cannot be, the law in Ohio. 7

10 STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW II: Whether a police officer is reasonable in his use of deadly force must be determined from an objective, rather than a subjective, test. In its verdict, the trial court relied upon Brelo s subjective beliefs to find the use of force justified. That reliance contradicts binding precedent contained in United States Supreme Court cases and the Ohio Jury Instructions. See, OJI ; Graham v. Connor, 490 U.S. 386, (1989). Reasonableness must be judged from the perspective of a reasonable police officer in light of all the facts and circumstances confronting the officer at the time and in the moments before the use of deadly force rather than with 20/20 vision of hindsight. State v. White, Ohio-492, at 22-23, citing Graham, supra. Not by finding Brelo s observations and beliefs controlling, as evidence in the in the following passages: Brelo was also aware of the length- in both distance and time - of the chase. Although he was driving one of the cars nearest to the Malibu he likely knew that many other cars were in pursuit, yet Russell still would not stop. He knew Russell had gone over 100 miles per hour and ignored dozens of traffic controls. All of this would make him wonder why the people in the car were so desperate to escape. Appendix, at p. A-29 (Emphasis added). Under the totality of these circumstances he [Brelo] perceived an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm to himself and other officers and decided to use deadly force to seize the Malibu's occupants. Appendix, at p. A-30 (Emphasis added). It is Brelo s perception of threat that matters. Id. These findings ignore Tenn. v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 105 S.Ct. 1694, 85 L.Ed.2d 1 (1985), in which the United States Supreme Court imposed special circumstances or conditions that limit an officer's authority to use gunfire to affect a seizure; namely a suspect s conduct that threatens the officer at a level of serious physical harm or death. It requires asking whether the officer could reasonably have had probable cause to believe that the suspect pose[d] a threat of serious 8

11 physical harm, either to the officer or to others. Garner, 471 U.S. at 11. Thus, reasonable threat perception is the minimum requirement before deadly force may be used. Untalan v. City of Lorain, 430 F.3d 312, 314 (6th Cir. 2008). Whether the officer reasonably perceived a threat must be assessed objectively. In Plumhoff v. Rickard, S.Ct., 2014 WL (May 27, 2014), the Court found police officers justified in shooting at a motor vehicle that sped away and continued to pose a clear and present danger to the public and police, but noted that its holding was limited to the facts of that case deadly force was justified to the extent the suspect posed an ongoing danger. The continued firing was justified as the suspect car, after colliding with police, was still operable and was still being operated. However, in a somewhat prescient note considering the facts presented in Brelo s trial, the United States Supreme Court pronounced: This would be a different case if petitioners had initiated a second round of shots after an initial round had clearly incapacitated Rickard and had ended any threat of continued flight, or if Rickard had clearly given himself up. But that is not what happened. In this case, the perceived threat came from the Malibu and the mistaken belief that Russell and or Williams was firing at Brelo or other officers. At trial, Lt. Kutz testified that Cleveland Police officers are discouraged from rushing a suspect and are not taught to do so. Brelo s actions as testified to by others were not objectively reasonable in light of the training he received and the actions of the other officers on scene. Lt. Kutz further stated that his officers are taught to avoid crossfire, and it is always preferable to be in a position of cover A police officer may only use deadly force against a suspect under the Fourth Amendment if it is objectively reasonable based upon the totality of the circumstances. But, in the verdict, the trial court cited Brelo s observations and beliefs, not those of an objective police officer, thus abandoning the law as stated by both the United States and Ohio Supreme Courts. 9

12 The verdict decries any analysis or resolution of the use of the tactics by simply finding that the tactics were not the issue, rather the subjective impressions of Brelo were. This is a patent misunderstanding of the reasonableness standard. The error in analysis could infect future cases. These cases are not unique, nor is it the only excessive force case in the public arena. The trial court specifically noted the recent police shooting in Cleveland, Ohio, where a 12-year-old boy was shot and killed by a police officer. Because of the potential for repetition of error, this Court should grant leave to correct error in the law as written in the verdict and to ensure that justice is applied equally throughout the Common Pleas Court. STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW III: The Lesser-included offenses of Voluntary Manslaughter include Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter and Aggravated Assault, but not Felonious Assault. This Court should also accept this appeal to clarify that the proper lesser-included offenses for Voluntary Manslaughter are Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter and Aggravated Assault. The trial court found that Brelo acted with the requisite mens rea of knowingly causing the deaths of both Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams. An attempt to commit a charged offense is always a lesser-included offense. State v. Evans, 122 Ohio St.3d 381, 2009-Ohio In Evans, this Court clarified the test for determining lesser-included offenses: In determining whether an offense is a lesser included offense of another, a court shall consider whether one offense carries a greater penalty than the other, whether some element of the greater offense is not required to prove commission of the lesser offense, and whether the greater offense as statutorily defined cannot be committed without the lesser offense as statutorily defined also being committed. Evans, syllabus. At trial, the State specifically asked the trial court to consider the lesserincluded offenses of both Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter and Aggravated Assault if the trial court found that the State did not prove the element of causation. 10

13 Moreover, factual or legal impossibility is not a defense to an attempt crime if that offense could have been committed had the attendant circumstances been as the actor believed them to be. R.C (B). Thus, whether Russell and Williams were already dead by the time Brelo fired his fatal shots should have been irrelevant to an Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter charge. Brelo clearly believed that both Russell and Williams were alive when he shot them there would have been no reason to reload a second time and fire a third volley into their already bullet-ridden corpses otherwise. Any possible mistake of fact on Brelo s part cannot negate his intent to kill. As such, the trial court should have found him guilty of Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter even if it believed the causation element was not present. But the trial court s verdict did not even consider that charge. The only other lesser-included offense of Voluntary Manslaughter is Aggravated Assault in violation of R.C , which the trial court also failed to consider. To prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Brelo committed Aggravated Assault, the trial court needed to find that Brelo knowingly caused serious physical harm to Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams, or caused or attempted to cause physical harm to Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams by means of a deadly weapon. The only distinction between Aggravated Assault and Voluntary Manslaughter is the victim s death. This section (R.C ) complements the offense of voluntary manslaughter[;] This section is also a lesser included offense to... attempted voluntary manslaughter. R.C , 1974 Committee Comment to H 511. Instead of applying the law this Court established in Evans, the trial court determined that Felonious Assault was a lesser-included offense of Voluntary Manslaughter. This Court should clarify that both Attempted Voluntary Manslaughter and Aggravated Assault are lesser-included offenses of Voluntary Manslaughter. This would, at the least, prevent the logically-indefensible 11

14 outcome in which a person who knowingly shoots a victim intending to cause the victim s death is guilty of no crime at all if others did the same. STATE S PROPOSITION OF LAW IV: R.C (A) allows the State to appeal any other decision by a trial court except the final verdict. There is no requirement that the decision be on a novel legal issue. Finally, the Eighth District, in denying the State s motion for leave to appeal pursuant to R.C (A), created additional limitations not present in that statute that preclude the State from appealing pursuant to that statute. In State v. Bistricky, 51 Ohio St.3d 157, 159, 555 N.E.2d 644 (1990), this Court held that this statute includes substantive law rulings made in a criminal case which results in a judgment of acquittal so long as the verdict itself is not appealed. State v. Bistricky, 51 Ohio St.3d 157, 159, 555 N.E.2d 644 (1990). The Eighth District Court of Appeals did not contest the State s assertion that the trial court erred by disregarding binding precedent on any of the three issues described above. Instead, the Eighth District held as follows: The state argues that these alleged errors were manifest because they did not involve novel legal issues, but binding precedent that the trial court ignored before granting a judgment of acquittal. To argue that the trial court ignored settled precedent, however, is to undermine a claim that we should grant leave to appeal because the claimed errors are capable of repetition yet evading review. * * * Assuming for purposes of this motion that the state is correct that the trial court ignored binding legal precedent, the trial court s interpretation of that precedent is itself nonbinding, because a lower court cannot overturn precedent established by a superior court. State v. Brelo, 8th Dist. No , Motion No Thus, because the trial court s errors concerned settled precedent rather than novel legal issues, the Eighth District presumed that they were incapable of repetition yet evading review, and because a trial court cannot overrule such precedent, there is no reason to think such an error will ever be repeated. 12

15 To be clear: this decision overrules Bistricky in the Eighth District. No decision by a trial court is ever binding on a superior court and no case involves purely novel issues. And the Eighth District s assertion that a trial court s decision to ignore settled precedent actually renders the appeal incapable of repetition (because such an error would be so obvious) is circular reasoning in the extreme. It establishes a perverse, upside-down, Alice-in-Wonderland framework whereby the more wrong the trial court is, the less reason there is to correct it because no one would ever follow such an obviously wrong decision, despite the fact that the trial court has already committed just such an error. If this Court allows the trial court s interpretation of the law to stand, it will become the standard by which all future Rule 29 motions and bench trials are decided in Cuyahoga County on this issue. The State will have to prove that the defendant was the sole but-for cause of the victim s death an impossibility in cases where multiple persons each inflict fatal wounds. It is axiomatic that any decision by a trial court is not binding precedent on the rest of the state. If this deprived an appellate court of jurisdiction to reveal a State s appeal, it would effectively repeal R.C (A) and preclude the acceptance of any and all appeals by the State to correct errors in a trial court s rulings. This would leave the State in the same position it was in before this Court held in Bistricky that appellate courts in Ohio have the ability to review such appeals. This case is the epitome of what R.C (A) and Bistricky allow. Here, a trial court has changed the law of causation; yet because the error is not novel or binding, the Eighth District has determined that it will not review the error. Although the Eighth District has the discretion to accept or reject any appeals filed under R.C (A), these cannot be reasons for doing so, and the Eighth District s reliance upon them is its declaration that Bistricky will no longer be the law in Cuyahoga County. This Court should intercede to reassert that its 13

16 decisions mean what they say, that Bistricky is still the law in Ohio, and that the Eighth District s belief that the more wrong a trial court is, the less reason there is to correct the error, is a Catch- 22 this Court will not entertain. CONCLUSION The State respectfully submits that this Court s review is necessary to address both the series of errors made by the trial court in its decision and the Eighth District s refusal to correct those errors. This verdict will endanger the public, allow for multiple actors to escape conviction as long as they kill together, and lead to more unnecessary deaths created by police-crossfire situations. The State therefore submits that this case is worthy of this Court s review and respectfully requests that this Honorable Court either (1) reverse the Eighth District s decision and remand with instructions to allow the State leave to appeal, or (2) accept jurisdiction and hear this case on the merits. Respectfully submitted, TIMOTHY J. MCGINTY Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney /s/ Timothy J. McGinty Timothy J. McGinty ( ) Cuyahoga County Prosecutor T. Alan Regas ( ) Adam Chaloupka ( ) Assistant Prosecuting Attorneys The Justice Center 1200 Ontario Street Cleveland, Ohio (216)

17 CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE A copy of the foregoing Memorandum in Support of Jurisdiction was sent by this 2nd day of July, 2014 to R. Brian Moriarty, counsel for Defendant-Appellant Michael Brelo. /s/ Timothy J. McGinty Timothy J. McGinty ( ) Cuyahoga County Prosecutor 15

18 A-1

19 A-2

20 A-3

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22 A-5

23 A-6

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25 A-8

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29 A-12

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31 A-14

32 A-15

33 A-16

34 A-17

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36 A-19

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38 A-21

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40 A-23

41 A-24

42 A-25

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48 A-31

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54 A-37