Ernie Haynes never imagined that taking care of his three grandsons after his daughter’s drug overdose death would turn him into a felon at the hands of a longtime Ohio prosecutor known to sidestep the rules intended to protect a defendant’s rights in criminal trials.
A week after his daughter died in December 2017, the court granted temporary custody of the children to their biological father, a man Haynes said also struggled with drug addiction. When Haynes refused to give up his grandchildren, Wood County authorities arrested him and charged him with six counts of abduction. The action sparked a five-year legal battle to clear his name.
“We never got to grieve … because immediately we were plunged into this hell,” said Haynes’ wife, Marcella Haynes.
Ernie Haynes, 59, didn’t know it, but the assistant prosecutor who would try his case, Thomas Matuszak, had a track record of repeatedly violating legal standards to sway juries at trials and win convictions, according to court findings. He would do the same in Haynes’ case.
And it wouldn’t be the last.
Matuszak is one of about 100 prosecutors across Ohio who the courts found had violated standards meant to preserve a defendant’s civil rights in criminal trials, an investigation by Columbia Journalism Investigations, NPR and member station WVXU in Cincinnati, and The Ohio Newsroom found. He is one of 13 who did so more than once. Together, these 13 prosecutors accounted for nearly one-third of the 104 cases in the state where courts found that prosecutors acted improperly.
I’m not the least bit surprised by any of this – I’ve been saying the same thing for years, often being admonished by other attorneys for saying it. Of course DAs disregard the law and evidentiary rules when it suits them. Of course they don’t care when their cases are appealed or even overturned. It’s all about maintaining their precious 100% conviction rate and having their resumes reflect 50K felonies convicted for 2 million years.
Notably absent from the article is that they pretty much run the criminal courtroom and docket, and judges are essentially rubber stamps, scratching their signatures on whatever the prosecutor puts in front of him without reading anything beyond the signature block.
I vaguely remember an article on Justia a few years ago from a supposed legal scholar who argued that the state should be responsible for providing fair trials. I found that a bit alarming because I always thought that was the judge’s responsibility. I pointed that out to the author in the comments and asked what he thought the judge’s responsibilities were, if he thought providing a fair trial was the DA’s job. Not surprised that he didn’t reply.
85% or more of the police report filed on me was false and fraudulent.
When my wife told the assistant prosecutor that much of the report were fabricated lies, the assistant prosecutor told her “If you bring this up in court, we will put a life sentence on your husband!”
How’s that for the so-called justice system!?
There is no real justice system-just a much corrupted legal system.
The assistant prosecutor who did this is now a judge just like in the article said that some go on to be judges.
Thoughts on this:
1) Fox guarding the hen house, e.g., legal system guards itself locally in a self-policing manner, which as the DOJ has reflected, which it does on itself, it does not work.
2) The state AG needs to get a spine to do something about this, and won’t because they are spineless overall in the political environment they are in.
3) The OH Bar association should investigate these folks further and possibly seek disbarment of them. However, that takes a reversal of #1 above since it is the same situation.
4) Not related to the state, but the profession…the DOD and the UCMJ reek of the same stink when it comes to their dealings in the military legal system.