Attorneys seek more time to file Noe court report
11/16/2007Attorneys for former GOP fund-raiser Tom Noe have requested more time to transmit the court record from last year's lengthy state trial in which he was convicted of stealing millions of dollars from the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation.
Judge Mark Pietrykowski of the 6th District Court of Appeals set a deadline of Tuesday for the record from that trial to be filed and indicated there would be no extensions.
But the Lucas County Common Pleas Court reporter who worked Noe's trial has said she will not finish the transcript from that trial until at least the end of this year.
Noe's attorneys asked the appeals court to issue a 60-day extension from the Tuesday deadline to allow the court reporter time to finish the transcript. Noe's legal team already has received five extensions.
"For 11 months, Mr. Noe has tirelessly sought completion of his trial transcript and the filing of the record from his case so that this court could consider the many errors that plagued his trial," Noe's attorneys said in their latest filing, which the appeals court received Tuesday.
Judge Pietrykowski did not return phone calls seeking comment.
Noe, a former rare-coin dealer and past chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party, was convicted of 29 counts in Lucas County Common Pleas Court on Nov. 13, 2006, and was sentenced a week later to 18 years in state prison. His legal team filed a notice of appeal on Dec. 15.
The court reporter who handled Noe's case, Lynette Shindorf, has said she estimates the transcript will be 5,000 pages long. She took over a year to finish the transcript for the murder trial of former Toledo priest Gerald Robinson, and Lucas County Common Pleas Administrative Judge Frederick McDonald said she would not be excused from her daily duties in court to finish the Noe trial transcript.
Noe is serving a 27-month federal sentence in Florida for illegally funneling more than $45,000 into the re-election campaign of President Bush in 2003.
Contact Joe Vardon at:
jvardon@theblade.com
or 419-410-5055.