Trending
LISBON -- The jury trial that was supposed to start Wednesday morning in the John Gamble criminal complicity case over a 2020 campaign photograph has been delayed again.
As potential jurors waited in the hallway at Columbiana County Municipal Court, Visiting Judge David Stucki granted a continuance requested by the state of Ohio, setting new trial dates of Jan. 31 and Feb. 1.
"The case was continued due to the unavailability of a material witness, a police officer who became ill last night," Senior Assistant Ohio Attorney General Dan Kasaris said.
The court had called on 43 potential jurors to show up, some standing and some sitting for nearly an hour before being told they were done. Several witnesses had arrived also.
With incidents of COVID and the flu season starting up, Kasaris indicted they felt it was better to be smart than do anything in haste. The trial is expected to take two days and includes several police officers on the witness list. The trial had been bumped from August to December after defense attorney John Juhasz was unavailable then because of a Mahoning County case. The defense team includes both Juhasz and attorney Ron Yarwood.
The four misdemeanor counts of complicity to violate Ohio's Little Hatch Act, which prohibits classified employees from participating in partisan political activity, stem from Gamble's campaign for county prosecutor, which he lost in 2020 to Vito Abruzzino, who's in his fourth year as county prosecutor and recently filed to run for re-election.
At the time, Gamble was the chief assistant prosecutor for Columbiana County. During the campaign, when a photograph of Gamble with several area police officers appeared on his Facebook page with the statement that they supported him, Columbiana County Republicans had an issue with the photograph.
Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a criminal case against Gamble in August 2020, charging him with the four complicity counts. The classified police officers appearing in the photo with Gamble were not charged with any violations. Gamble's position was considered unclassified.
Stucki previously dismissed the case, but the attorney general's office appealed the decision to the Seventh District Court of Appeals. The 11th District Court, sitting for the Seventh District, overturned the dismissal and ruled the trial court erred, noting the lack of a determination on whether Gamble could be charged with complicity since he couldn't be charged with a violation of the Little Hatch Act as an unclassified county employee.
Gamble's attorneys appealed the ruling to the Ohio Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case, sending the case back to county Municipal Court for Stucki to hear again.