CUDA: After resigning his post as county recorder earlier in the day, Patrick O’Malley headed to Akron to plead guilty to one count of obscenity. The guilty plea marks the end of a lengthy investigation which revealed he used the internet service America Online to receive indecent materials over a six year period from 1998 to 2004. Ideastream’s Kymberli Hagelberg was on the scene at the courthouse this morning.
HAGELBERG: Patrick O’Malley walked into court as if he was walking into any other government meeting. He smiled at reporters and nodded and was very friendly. After greeting us he sat down and only really answered with ‘Yes your honor, yes I understand,’ as the judge explained every single part of the plea agreement to him.
CUDA: As part of that agreement O’Malley was required to surrender his passport and is not allowed to leave the northern district of Ohio without the court’s permission. In exchange, he signed an unsecured 100-thousand-dollar bond which allows him to go free until his sentencing in August. O’Malley could face up to 5 years in prison.
O’Malley declined to talk to reporters after his appearance in the Akron courtroom, but his lawyer Ian Friedman did. Speaking on his client’s behalf, he stated unequivocally that this scandal is the final chapter in O’Malley’s checkered political career.
FRIEDMAN: He will not be seeking any other public offices from this day forward.
CUDA: But the question on everyone’s mind was not whether O’Malley might try to return to a life in politics, but just what sort of pornography was O’Malley involved in that could prompt a federal indictment of this scope? His lawyer dismissed speculation that the material involved children, but refused to provide further details.
FRIEDMAN: This is material that involved adults. This is material that he is accepting responsibility for as being in violation of the federal obscenity statute.
CUDA: Legal experts say what’s obscene in one community might be considered OK in another, making it hard to say for certain just what sort of material he was caught with. But as Kymberli Hagelberg points out, a guilty plea may be one way of keeping that information private.
HAGELBERG: They stipulate that yes; he used his America Online account for things that might include obscene pictures --what the law describes as filthy books and written matter of indecent moral character. Now all that is a little vague, and that’s because he’s agreed to be charged with this crime –so- there’s no discovery, there’s no jury to hear evidence. And it’s one way that he could take responsibility for the crime, which they were going to charge him with anyway, but not give away any of the specific details.
CUDA: Rumors about O’Malley’s fate began circulating Wednesday, and was a big topic of discussion among city and county officials. Cuyahoga County Commissioner Peter Lawson Jones calls it …
LAWSON-JONES: A tragedy in many respects. Certainly unanticipated. I think everyone’s in shock.
CUDA: Well, perhaps not everyone. A1991 editorial in the Plain Dealer described O’Malley as a “barstool away from political self-destruction,” and indeed, he has a long history of making attention-getting headlines. Accusations include assaulting an EMS worker, threatening the mayor, and during a messy and public divorce, a charge of domestic violence that was eventually dismissed in court.
As for his most recent folly, O’Malley, expressed his regrets in an interview with WKYC television.
O’MALLEY: I can apologize until I’m blue in the face, and I do not expect people to forgive me. I probably will not forgive myself
CUDA: It’s still uncertain who will fill O’Malley’s shoes, but the Democratic Party is expected to make a temporary appointment until voters select a permanent replacement in November. Gretchen Cuda, 90.3.
**ideastream reporters Bill Rice, Dan Bobkoff and Kymberli Hagelberg contributed to this story