Ohio prosecutors broke rules to win convictions and got away with it
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.
https://www.npr.org/2023/12/14/1216111092/ohio-court-prosecutor-misconduct-due-process-rights
They're about like Texas prosecutors. Anything for a "win".
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