Cuyahoga County Recorder Patrick O'Malley quits, pleads guilty to obscenity charge
Friday, May 16, Cleveland Plain Dealer
Cuyahoga County Recorder Patrick O'Malley
made his reputation as a scrapper, politically and on the street.
But O'Malley showed
little fight Thursday, when he resigned from his job, then drove to Akron, where he accepted a deal with federal prosecutors
and pleaded guilty to one count of obscenity. O'Malley then dodged reporters by slipping out the courthouse's basement
back door.
The guilty plea sets off a scramble to replace O'Malley in a job that comes
with a built-in political base and the ability to dole out jobs.
It capped nearly four years
of speculation after FBI agents raided O'Malley's Chagrin Falls home and seized two personal computers. A search warrant
revealed they were looking for two things: records related to a billboard deal involving the city of Cleveland that O'Malley
brokered and images of child pornography.
O'Malley's lawyer, Ian Friedman, declined
to detail the computer images that led to O'Malley's guilty plea. He stressed they did not include child pornography.
Friedman said O'Malley's computer contained images of adult pornography that jurors
may have considered legally obscene.
"There is certain material that crosses the line,"
Friedman said. "I can't comment on the exact nature. I think it will be debated at sentencing."
Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge David Dowd during the hearing that O'Malley accessed the images through
an America Online account between February 1998 and November 2004. They offered few other details during the 45-minute hearing.
Charges against O'Malley were filed Thursday morning as rumors swirled about his political
and legal future. He was charged under a criminal information provision, used almost exclusively when defendants negotiate
with investigators and then plead guilty.
The charge said "O'Malley did knowingly
use an interactive computer service for the carriage in interstate and foreign commerce of numerous obscene, lewd, lascivious
and filthy pictures, writings and other matters of indecent character."
O'Malley
has been a colorful and controversial politician for nearly two decades. He served as a Cleveland city councilman for eight
years, during which he was dogged by accusations of fights in bars and on the street.
He
was later appointed county recorder and later tried unsuccessfully to fill a vacant county commissioner seat.
O'Malley reveled in the persona of a fighting Irishman, but later accusations of spousal abuse and domestic violence
harmed his reputation.
He also fell on hard times financially. A property he bought on West
25th Street with hopes of renovating was in foreclosure, and a criminal trial in federal court would have cost hundreds of
thousands of dollars in legal fees.
O'Malley -- dressed in a dark suit, blue shirt and
matching tie -- smiled Thursday as he walked into the courtroom and greeted reporters. He declined to talk after the hearing.
He is scheduled to be sentenced in August. According to the plea agreement, he probably faces
at least six months in prison under federal sentencing guidelines but could get probation or be put under house arrest.
He is free on $100,000 bond.
O'Malley sent his resignation letter to county
commissioners and the county's Democratic Party on Thursday afternoon. The party immediately accepted it. County Administrator
Dennis Madden said commissioners would accept the resignation Tuesday.
Commissioner Tim Hagan
said commissioners would name an interim recorder as early as Thursday. Ultimately, the Democratic Party will select a person
to fill the remaining seven months of O'Malley's term and eventually oppose Republican Cathy Luks in the November
general election.
Hagan said the commissioners' interim choice would hopefully match
the party's candidate.
Thomas Roche, O'Malley's chief of staff, will lead the
recorder's office in the meantime. The office tracks property ownership.
Nearly a dozen
potential replacement names were floated Thursday. They include:
Warrensville Heights Mayor
Marcia Fudge; Cleveland Clerk of Council Patricia Britt; Cleveland City Council President Martin J. Sweeney; Cleveland councilmen
Matt Zone and Joe Cimperman; State Reps. Barbara Boyd, Timothy DeGeeter and Sandra Williams; State Sen. Shirley Smith; and
lawyer Michael Nelson.
Britt, Sweeney and Boyd expressed no interest in the job when reached
for comment.
Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones said he expected a cavalcade of contenders for
the position, as it is viewed as a stepping stone to a more powerful elected office.
"I
think it's going to be right out of central casting of a Cecil B. DeMille movie," Jones said.
O'Malley was paid $72,372 last year.
The Plain Dealer last month exposed widespread
patronage in O'Malley's office. A review of his 2007 payroll showed he gave out nearly three dozen jobs, with a combined
payroll of $1.4 million, to politically connected people and their family.
Jones said he
expects the next recorder to perform a review of the office's "fiscal, programmatic and personnel practices"
to restore public trust in the office.
Friedman, O'Malley's lawyer, said the guilty
plea was for personal conduct and not related to public corruption. The federal obscenity charge, while uncommon, was the
one that held the most weight, said Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Edwards.
"This is what
we felt was the most provable charge," Edwards said. He would not give details about the scope of the investigation other
than to say it related to images found on the computers seized in 2004.
Edwards could not
say if O'Malley would be subject to state sexual offender registration laws. It remains to be seen how the conviction
will affect O'Malley's law license, Friedman said.
