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Thursday, July 2, 2009
Ohio Supreme Court dimisses defamation lawsuit against Dayton Daily News
COLUMBUS — The Ohio Supreme Court has dismissed the lawsuit of a former Dayton law department official who claimed that the Dayton Daily News defamed him and his wife in a series of 1998 articles.
In May 2008, Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Michael L. Tucker dismissed the 1999 lawsuit filed by John and Cynthia Scaccia. The Ohio 2nd District Court of Appeals upheld Tucker’s ruling, so the Scaccia’s appealed to the Supreme Court.
On Wednesday, July 1, the high court declined jurisdiction and dismissed the case.
Tucker found that the Dayton Daily News didn’t defame the character of the Scaccias. At issue were articles that involved the couple’s acceptance of more than $500,000 in financial gifts from an elderly neighbor.
Tucker found that the newspaper demonstrated that the four news articles and one editorial in question were substantially true, and “truth, obviously, is an absolute defense to a defamation claim.”
The newspaper reported prosecutors’ assertion that the Scaccias exploited Charles Hoffman by accepting the gifts, but it also reported a probate court ruling that Hoffman was not exploited, Tucker noted.
“It may very well be the articles invoke an unflattering impression of Mr. and Mrs. Scaccia, but this impression is created by the circumstances of their relationship with Mr. Hoffman, not by any untrue or inaccurate reporting,” Tucker wrote.
Hoffman died Dec. 30, 2000.
John Scaccia was chief of the Dayton law department’s criminal division when the articles were published. He is now in private practice.
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Marathon station shooter sentenced
DAYTON — Kyle McClendon, convicted of gunning down a stranger at a Harrison Twp. gas station, was sentenced to 27 and a half years to life in prison on Thursday, July 2.
“I don’t believe you have any remorse,” Montgomery County Common Pleas Judge Dennis J. Langer told McClendon. “You’re sorry for yourself.”
A jury decided June 12, that McClendon, 23, of Trotwood, was guilty of murder in the Feb. 8 shooting of David Driscoll. The jury also convicted McClendon of felonious assault and improper handling of a firearm in a motor vehicle.
McClendon and Driscoll met by chance Feb. 8 at a Marathon gas station, 4351 Riverside Drive. Prosecutors claimed Driscoll was executed in cold blood, while defense attorneys claimed Driscoll was the aggressor, a notion Langer repeatedly ridiculed.
“You were looking for trouble, not David,” Langer said. “You were the aggressor, not David.”
McClendon’s attorney Barbara Doseck read a statement from McClendon, stating that he was sorry for the shooting and that he hoped that Driscoll’s family would forgive him, but Langer cited the pre-sentencing investigation, in which McClendon continued to shift blame and introduced race as a factor. McClendon is black. Driscoll was white.
“Race had nothing to do with it,” Langer said. “It’s shifting responsibility to something that isn’t there.”
Prosecutors said Driscoll, a Sinclair Community College student, had been at a party with other Sinclair students at an apartment off Riverside Drive. About 3:30 a.m., Driscoll and two friends walked to the gas station to get cigarettes. As they walked through the parking lot, McClendon pulled into the lot, revving the car’s engine and driving toward them.
Driscoll and McClendon had a “brief verbal altercation” inside the store, then McClendon left and went back to his car, which was at a gas pump. Driscoll’s two friends went around behind the gas station to avoid trouble, but Driscoll walked out to the gas pump and exchanged words again with McClendon, prosecutors said.
That’s when the two shook hands and hugged. But as Driscoll was walking away, McClendon summoned Driscoll back, then shot him five times. McClendon left the scene in the car, and Driscoll died at the scene, prosecutors said.
Gretchen Driscoll, David’s mother, wept as she read aloud a victim impact statement, noting that her son, “kind and gentle,” was going to transfer to the University of Cincinnati to study aerospace engineering. David’s hair was long because he was growing it for Locks of Love.
She also said David had wanted to be an organ donor, but could not because of how he died.
“I live because I have to,” she said. “I no longer enjoy living. Kyle McClendon did not only kill my son. He killed me.”
Gretchen Driscoll also said that McClendon should have faced aggravated murder charges.
“Kyle should be facing the same sentence he gave my son,” she said.
Vicki Dumant, David’s aunt, also gave a statement to the court. She pointed to McClendon’s testimony that David Driscoll had tried to buy drugs from him, a claim that was reported in Dayton Daily News coverage of McClendon’s testimony.
“Help us purge the results of Kyle McClendon’s perjury,” Dumant said.
Langer did not specifically address that part of McClendon’s testimony, but said he had “repeatedly lied under oath,” and expected the jury to believe that nearly every witness in the case was lying except McClendon.
The sentence included not only the charges from the trial, but two counts from a previous case, in which Langer placed McClendon on intervention in lieu of conviction in and deferred the counts of carrying a concealed weapon and improper handling of a firearm in a vehicle.
Langer gave McClendon an additional 18 months for those charges after finding him guilty of those charges. He noted that McClendon was placed in intervention on Dec. 31 and told he could not, as a term of that supervised probation, possess a firearm.
“Thirty-nine days later, despite the order of the court, you had a gun,” Langer said. “You used that gun to kill a human being.”
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