AVON — City Prosecutor Anthony Manning was fired earlier this month and is now the subject of a criminal investigation.

Police and prosecutors are looking into a potentially illegal plea deal Manning gave an FBI computer technician caught shoplifting from Costco in Avon.

The deal allowed the shoplifter to plead guilty to a misdemeanor in Avon Lake Municipal Court even though he had already been indicted on a felony by a county grand jury.

Alan Write, who was fired by the FBI after his December 2006 arrest, later pleaded guilty to the felony charge in front of county Common Pleas Judge Mark Betleski and is currently on probation.

Avon Law Director John Gasior said Manning shouldn’t have had anything to do with the case once Write was indicted at the county level.

“It’s serious to involve yourself in the criminal process the way he did,” Gasior said.

Manning insists he did nothing wrong.

“I was offered the chance to resign,” he said. “I rejected their offer to resign because that looks like I did something wrong and I didn’t.”

Two cameras and a water pitcher

Everyone agrees the case began normally enough.

Write, 43, was in Costco on Dec. 22, 2006, a Friday night. A Costco security guard told police he saw Write remove a $25 water pitcher from its box and then hide two digital cameras worth a total of $659.98 in the box around 6:10 p.m., according to court documents.

Write was arrested and charged by Avon police with felony theft, because the merchandise he was accused of trying to steal was worth more than $500, the threshold for a felony theft charge.

Police reported to prosecutors that Write told the officer

“I wasn’t me” at the time.

His attorney, Michael O’Shea, said Write had never been in trouble with the law before. His client wanted to get the case over with and move on with his life.

Manning said he and O’Shea talked and decided Write would be a perfect candidate for a diversion program run by Lorain County Prosecutor Dennis Will’s office. Those who complete the intensive program have the charges against them dropped.

The alternative, Manning said he told O’Shea, was that Write plead guilty to a misdemeanor charge and spend seven days in the county jail, a requirement he said he imposed on everyone who pleaded a potential felony charge down to a misdemeanor.

Write opted to try for the diversion program in the hopes of avoiding jail time.

Indicted

When the indictment came down in April, Write found himself facing a felony theft charge. O’Shea said in his first meeting with Assistant County Prosecutor Tom Cahill, Cahill agreed Write would be a good fit for the diversion program.

There was just one sticking point to the deal — the victim in the case, Costco, had to agree to it. It didn’t.

In an attempt to get Costco to reconsider, O’Shea shared a report from Write’s psychologist with the company.

The psychologist, Gintautas Sabataitis, wrote he had been treating Write on and off since 1984 for obsessive-compulsive disorder. Among Write’s compulsions was an urge to shoplift.

But Sabataitis’ report said that since Write’s return to counseling after his arrest, his kleptomania had gone into remission.

Write had wanted to be caught and “felt relieved when he was arrested,” Sabataitis said in the report.

Sabataitis suggested that Write would do well in a diversion program as long as he continued therapy.

But Costco didn’t budge, O’Shea said.

One case, two pleas

County prosecutors also refused to consider a lesser misdemeanor charge, O’Shea said, leaving Write with two options — going to trial or taking a plea deal on a felony charge.

But a third option presented itself, O’Shea said, when he had a chance encounter with Manning after the diversion option was taken off the table.

Manning agreed to give Write the same plea deal he’d offered when Write’s case was still in Avon Lake Municipal Court — plead guilty to a misdemeanor and serve seven days in jail.

“There’s nothing that prevents me from doing this,” Manning said.

And on Feb. 12, 2008, two days before Write was supposed to go to trial before Judge Betleski, he took the plea deal and was sentenced to seven days in the county jail by Avon Lake Municipal Court Judge Darrel Bilancini.

Despite the disposition of the misdemeanor case, the felony case remained active in Betleski’s court. When O’Shea asked Betleski to drop the felony case,

Cahill, the assistant county prosecutor, fired back in a written motion saying that Manning didn’t have the power to do what he did.

Bilancini subsequently stayed his sentencing and Betleski ultimately decided that he had jurisdiction over the case.

Bilancini said he agrees with Betleski’s decision, but believed when he took Write’s plea that Manning had done what he needed to do to bring the case back to Avon Lake.

“I expect and believe that the prosecutors who work for the cities involved in the court … do their jobs,” he said.

Manning’s out

While Write’s case was disposed of in Betleski’s court when Write pleaded guilty to a felony theft charge and got two years of probation, Manning’s problems were just beginning.

After Will, the county prosecutor, complained to Avon officials, they reviewed the case and fired Manning from the $39,000-a-year job the former police officer and judicial candidate had held for 13 years. He was replaced with attorney Richard Kray.

“It was improper for him to do this,” Avon’s Gasior said, adding that Manning told him he believed Costco was “being too heavy-handed.”

Will declined to discuss either the Write case or the Manning investigation, and Avon Mayor Jim Smith said only that he was awaiting a report from Avon police on the matter.

Manning said he welcomes the investigation and expects to be exonerated, but he’s also anxious about what could happen.

“There’s an old saying that you can indict a ham sandwich,” he said.

O’Shea said he’s not sure why prosecutors were so eager to punish Write, a first-time offender, so harshly, especially since Costco officials eventually agreed not to oppose putting Write in the diversion program — although by then it was too late.

“It’s the strangest abuse of power without any rationalization that I’ve ever seen,” he said.

The bottom line, Gasior said, is that if Manning had allowed Write to take the plea deal when he was first in Avon Lake Municipal Court there wouldn’t have been a problem.

Now, it could mean criminal charges for a prosecutor.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

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