CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The marriage of newly elected Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Sherrie Miday to Ryan Miday, communications director for County Prosecutor Michael O'Malley, is unlikely to raise any major judicial ethics issues, according to experts.
There could be some scenarios where Judge Miday will be pressured to recuse herself from high-profile criminal cases she is assigned that her husband worked on, but two legal ethics experts told cleveland.com no professional conduct rules or previous Ohio Supreme Court decisions say an elected judge whose spouse is affiliated with a party in a criminal case must step aside and ask for a visiting judge.
"I do not think anyone should question the judge's impartiality in a criminal matter just because her husband works for the prosecutor's office, especially since he is not a lawyer there," said Joseph Gross, an attorney at Cleveland's Benesch Law Firm and the past chair of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association's Ethics and Professionalism Committee.
Cassandra Robertson, a professor of legal ethics at Case Western Reserve University's law school, agreed.
"This sounds like a position where [the relationship] is tangential enough that we wouldn't expect it to affect the judge's ability to be fair and impartial," Robertson said.
Ryan Miday was chief of staff to former Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason and ran O'Malley's successful campaign to unseat Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty in last year's Democratic primary. Sherrie Miday successfully unseated Judge Matthew McMonagle in the general election.
Each of Cuyahoga County's 34 Common Pleas Court judges conducts a slew of legal action besides trials and sentencing. They sign off on search warrants brought by assistant prosecutors and police officers, they oversee grand jury proceedings, they conduct arraignments and initial appearances, they set bond and make key rulings in the lead-up to a trial, including whether prosecutors have enough evidence to continue to trial and they hear allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.
The Justice Center has a long history judges and attorneys, both prosecutors and defense attorneys, who share both a workplace and close family ties.
Judge Nancy R. McDonnell is married to John Kosko, a supervisor in the Cuyahoga County's prosecutor's office. And her brother is a well-known criminal defense attorney. Judge Joan Synenberg is married to defense attorney Roger Synenberg, and newly elected Judge Michael Shaughnessy is the brother of Thomas Shaughnessy, another defense attorney.
Judicial canons and previous decisions by the Ohio Supreme Court's Board of Professional Conduct have set clear rules to avoid conflict in those cases. The attorneys can't work on any case that goes to the relative's courtroom, or the judge must step aside if the attorney works on it. Tom Shaughnessy said that's how he and his brother plan to handle cases.
But in cases where the judge's spouse or close family member is not a lawyer and not directly appearing before the judge, the rules become more vague and revert back to one of the general canons, which says a judge must be disqualified in a case where they cannot be impartial.
In the 1980s, a relationship that intertwined the bench and the prosecutor's office much more closely than the Midays' raised few issues.
Judge Michael J. Corrigan was elected to the Common Pleas bench in 1982, while his father, John T. Corrigan, was Cuyahoga County Prosecutor. The younger Corrigan, a former assistant prosecutor, heard cases brought by his father's employees for nine years before the elder Corrigan retired after 34 years in the office.
The issue was barely raised in Michael Corrigan's campaign for the bench. A September 1982 article in The Plain Dealer made a passing reference to the relationship, with Michael Corrigan denying that there would be any problems.
In the Midays' case, Robertson said a defense attorney may raise a recusal request if Ryan Miday played a very significant role on a high-profile case before it was assigned to Judge Miday's courtroom.
But even then, no clear precedent shows the judge must recuse herself, or even notify the attorneys on the case of her relationship, Gross said.
"Even if her husband was a prosecutor, she would not have to disclose" the relationship, Gross said.
O'Malley's office, through Ryan Miday, pointed to a 2012 Ohio Supreme Court decision that found no reason that Lucas County Judge John Bates should be disqualified from presiding over a case just because he was married to Lucas County Prosecutor Julia Bates.
In that ruling, Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor referred to an earlier standard set in a 2003 opinion that established that "A judge is presumed to follow the law and not to be biased, and the appearance of bias or prejudice must be compelling to overcome these presumptions."
Judge Miday addressed the issue in an October interview with the cleveland.com editorial board. She said she would "be happy to entertain" a defense attorney's motion for her to recuse herself if her impartiality was brought into question.
"But I think we're professional enough to be impartial and to see the case and hear the evidence and hear the facts and make determinations and judgments based on what's in the courtroom," Judge Miday said.
Two prominent defense attorneys interviewed by cleveland.com say they believe Judge Miday won't hesitate to rule against the prosecutor's office.
"I don't foresee it to be a problem and I don't anticipate filing any motions to recuse her," Tom Shaughnessy said.
Another prominent attorney, Ian Friedman, said he personally knows the Midays to be upstanding and professional.
"Even if Ryan were standing outside the courtroom projecting the opinions of the prosecutor's office, I would have no problem walking right past him and going into Judge Miday's courtroom and would expect nothing less than a thoughtful, fair and impartial ruling for my client," Friedman said.