Judge Dewey quits

FREMONT — The controversial tenure of a Sandusky County common pleas judge appears to be at its end, according to a news story in the Fremont News-Messenger. But Judge John Dewey said his decision to step down now is unrelated to a chorus of concern in the community that he helped fix the criminal case against ex-county prosecutor Tim Braun. On Dec. 6 Braun was sentenced to probation, suspended from his job, given a potential $77,000 paycheck and his full state pension under a plea deal in which Braun did not have to acknowledge any wrongdoing. Braun agreed to plead out to a third-degree misdemeanor unrelated to the actual crimes he was accused of committing, and no evidence or testimony against him was introduced in court under the deal. Braun sexually molested two women who worked in the prosecutor's office, sexually harassed other women in the office and falsified a crime in an attempt to intimidate or incriminate his accusers. He resigned under pressure on Dec. 31 after Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine filed a court case to remove him from office. "Dewey said he never colluded on behalf of the Braun case, and was never aware of any complaints from the victims in the case," the News-Messenger reported. The judge was aware there was a problem, however, after Braun went to him last year and asked for search warrants to obtain the women's phone records and text messages. Braun appears to have caused files from the prosecutor's office to temporarily go missing and he was conducting a bogus investigation to determine if two of the women who accused him of wrongdoing took the files. The files were mysteriously recovered — inside a file cabinet in Braun's office — after a real criminal investigation was started by the sheriff and state agents. Sheriff Chris Hilton turned the investigation over to state agents to avoid a conflict, but he raised serious objections after Braun pleaded out, saying the court was working harder to protect Braun than it was in seeing to it that the victims got justice. He and other local officials persuaded DeWine to use the governor's authority to remove elected officials with cause after Braun's criminal case concluded. Dewey has refused to respond to questions for months from the Register, but appears to have attempted to address them when he talked with a reporter from the News-Messenger. The answers he gave the newspaper, however, don't appear to be accurate to the available record. The judge told the News-Messenger he "never filed secret paperwork with court administrator Brock Kimmet," even though he secretly appointed Kimmet to be a deputy court clerk over all records in Braun's criminal case despite Kimmet's close friendship and professional association with Braun, and despite the Ohio Revised Code, which does not allow such an appointment. State law empowers the elected clerk of courts — in this instance Tracy Overmyer — domain over all court records. There are no exceptions or exemptions in the ORC that would have allowed Kimmet to be appointed by the judge. The secret appointment also was kept secret from Overmyer and the clerk's office. Dewey's court order also sealed the record, keeping it secret from the public. Dewey told the News-Messenger he was not constricted by the limitations in state law because he'd done the same thing — or the local court did — before, when the former sheriff, Kyle Overmyer, and former detective, Sean O'Connell, both faced criminal trials. Both men also took plea deals, but, unlike Braun, they were sentenced to prison. Dewey, whose final term in office ends this year, said he decided to resign now due to concerns about the pandemic. He said he will wait for the county Republican Party central committee to schedule a meeting to name an interim judge to finish out his term before announcing the date he will step down. The central committee is likely to choose the winner from the GOP primary race on Tuesday, which is too close to call. Jon Ickes received 3,294 votes in that race, just 233 more than Cynthia A. Welty, who received 3,061. As of Wednesday, there were 1,379 outstanding absentee ballots, and 404 outstanding provisional ballots not yet counted, according to the elections board. The final, certified count will be announced on May 15. The declared winner will face Democrat John Kolesar, who ran unopposed in the Democratic primary for the judge's seat. Kimmet also has not responded to questions from the Register for months and he was not quoted in the News-Messenger article posted online on Friday. The Register asked Kimmet on Friday if he also planned to resign. As of Friday evening, he had not replied to an additional series of questions sent to him and Dewey (via Kimmet) from the Register after it learned of Dewey's plan to resign. Meanwhile, Beth Tischler, the interim prosecutor who won a resounding victory in Tuesday's election, last week said she was pursuing the appointment of a special prosecutor to review Dewey's appointments in the Braun criminal case at the request of the clerk of court's office. Tracy Overmyer said previously that allowing a judge to circumvent the authority of the clerk's office diminishes its ability to maintain integrity over court records. Overmyer declined to comment Friday on Dewey's sudden announcement that he will resign just eight months prior to the end of his term.