Portage County Prosecutor Victor Vigluicci will close his office doors for the last time on Dec. 31. He began his career in November of 1977, when then-Democratic party chairman Roger DiPaolo, Sr. brought him into his private law practice.
When then-county Prosecutor David Norris was forced to resign in 1994 due to private legal problems, the local Democratic party had to appoint a successor. DiPaolo urged Vigluicci to put his hat in the ring, and he prevailed over six other attorneys for the post.
Vigluicci went on to run for eight consecutive terms as county prosecutor, winning each election unopposed. He will be succeeded by Connie Lewandowski, who currently serves as Portage County’s major crimes prosecutor.
Looking back on his career, Vigluicci said what still gets him up in the morning is knowing he can, or at least can do his best to, “give innocent victims of crime some peace of mind. It’s very rewarding work. We’re out looking for truth and justice. We’re the good guys.”
If a complex job has a single key, he said his is separating evil from stupidity.
“There are people in this world among us that are truly evil and that need to be separated from society,” he said. “On the entire other end of that spectrum are people that do stupid things and don’t necessarily need to get a criminal record. In between, there are 100 other shades of black and white. One of the things that I look for in hiring prosecutors is the ability to look at that spectrum and accurately gauge what you’ve got in front of you.”
Vigluicci declined to speak about specific cases, neither those that resulted in convictions nor those that saw a defendant walk away. Nor will he rank cases by any standard of measure.
“When you’re in my job, you see terrible things, very terrible things that you wouldn’t want anybody to have to work or live through,” he said. “There have been so many terrible cases. It doesn’t seem right to give them priorities because they were all so tragic and many of them so senseless and affect families in just a permanent way. To this day, they still feel the effects of it.”
Vigluicci said he would love to see some closure on unsolved murder cases, but can’t create evidence. Again citing respect for the victims’ families, he declined to specify which ones.
“Many of those cases, I have very strong suspicions of who committed the crime, but insufficient evidence to go forward. A prosecutor only gets one shot at conviction. If you try for conviction because of someone you strongly suspect, and you don’t provide enough evidence to prove it, the case is forever done. Double jeopardy attaches even if more evidence is obtained later. Too bad, case is done,” he said.
The job comes with other challenges, some of which seem to be escalating.
“I fear that law enforcement is becoming very political,” Vigluicci said. “I don’t think politics has any place in the criminal justice system, either prosecutor, police or judges. And I see that happening more and more. I see that our judges now have Ds and Rs after their names when they should be impartial. I see police and prosecutors pushing political agendas, which I think is wrong and detrimental to the society that we’re sworn to protect.”
The outgoing prosecutor also cited budgetary challenges for an office that handles more caseloads every year. Salary demands and the need for more staff all boil down to what Vigluicci called “a greater demand for a limited pot of money.”
The job appears to have been anything but boring.
“Just when I thought, ‘Now I’ve seen everything,’ I come to work the next day, and there’s something new, unbelievable. The things that people do and get into,” he said.
A former defense attorney, Vigluicci said he encourages his staff to expect the best from the defense team in each case, and to be over-prepared for whatever may come.
“There have been times when myself and some of my assistants haven’t met that,” he admitted. “When that happens, we take a close look at it and try to identify what we should have done to do better next time. Nobody can hit that high mark every time. Trial prep is crucial in our job. The burden’s on us. The defense need do nothing but sit there. Truth beyond a reasonable doubt is a very high burden.”
Dealing with grand juries can be a challenge, too.
“I always tell my grand jury when we’re just getting started, ‘I challenge any of you to put 12 adults in a room and get them to agree on anything unanimously,’ but that’s what we have to do every day,” he said.
Vigluicci said he’s never sympathized with a defendant or privately hoped the person would walk free. His job has always been to determine what should be criminally charged and at what level. Even that, he said, takes a great deal of discretion.
“The choices that we make as prosecutors are obviously important and are the precise reason why you need someone with good judgment and moral character to hold an office of prosecutor. It takes common sense. It takes a big picture view,” he said.
If the grand jury determines a law has been violated, a jury or a judge should determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, he said.
He said he gauges his success not by the numbers of convictions but “by seeking the truth, by having the truth come out and by having justice be done based on those truthful facts. A prosecutor is a seeker of truth and justice, not conviction. If the jury says someone is not guilty, so be it. Move to the next case. If the jury says someone’s guilty, we will argue for a just sentence.”
Conviction, though, doesn’t have to mean incarceration or even punishment. He recalled receiving calls from inmates’ families, begging him to keep their loved one in jail because it was the first time they knew their son, daughter, husband or wife was safe, fed and receiving medical attention.
“I hear that more than you can imagine. Those people are crying out for some help for their loved ones, right? And the only place they can turn to is the criminal justice system because we have the stick. ‘You will enter a treatment program. You will enter drug court or a mental health court and, if you don’t, you might end up in jail.’ What we’re doing is forcing them to confront an addiction or mental health issue where the criminal justice system will hopefully push them into some relief. I see that working. Not always, but sometimes that’s all there is,” he said.
In a career that’s spanned almost a half century, Vigluicci said he has never felt political pressure to handle a case or a defendant a certain way.
“I am impervious to that,” he said. “Anybody who would try would learn very quickly. I’ve had people call and ask for favors. Someone they know has been arrested and charged, whether it’s based on politics or it’s based on personal acquaintance. I have never, ever acceded to that and never will. People have tried and they have gotten nowhere.”
Most frustrating for Vigluicci has been dealing with state legislators. A member of the Ohio Prosecuting Attorneys Association and vice chairman of the state’s Organized Crime Investigations Commission, he has testified before state lawmakers on any number of bills and causes.
“I find many of our state legislators to be sheep in wolves’ clothing,” he said. “They talk tough law and order. They run for office with police standing next to them in their commercials and, when it comes down to the performance of their jobs, they do whatever they can to minimize criminal penalties and to release prisoners as early as possible. I’ve seen several good efforts torpedoed.”
Pressing his point, Vigluicci said that when he took office, a person convicted of burglary could get up to 25 years. Now it’s eight.
Vigluicci recalled working hard to get Ohio’s federal statutes to reflect actual sentencing, only to see lawmakers effectively repeal Senate Bill 2, which, among other things, stipulated that a five-year sentence meant a five-year sentence.
SB 2 was passed into law in 1996, but Vigluicci said he watched as legislators pecked away at it until it meant nothing. Once again, people can be sentenced to a range of prison time, with the ultimate release decision up to a parole board.
“We’re right back to where we were. One step forward, two steps backward. The length of sentences has been greatly reduced, and the chances of not even doing that sentence are greatly enhanced,” he said.
As an OPAA member, Vigluicci has been able to point out poorly written statutes and anomalies in state law. Some legislators seem to listen, but sometimes, he feels his words fall on deaf ears.
“It galls me even more when these same people that are passing these laws profess themselves to be tough on crime and back the blue,” he said. “It seems their intent is always to minimize criminal responsibility, to minimize the jail prison population and to hide from the public the fact that someone has a criminal record. If I’m going to hire an accountant for my office, I’d like to know if he was in prison for embezzlement or theft.”
As it is, Vigluicci said an increasing number of convictions can be hidden via expungement and sealing of records, and Gov. Mike DeWine seems to be wielding his pardon pen with abandon.
“I got one the other day for drunk driving. That’s the new Columbus, kinder and gentler for criminals. I don’t see it,” Vigluicci said.
More promising is eliminating a provision in Ohio law that people who can’t or won’t pay their child support lose their driver’s license. Lawmakers seem to be listening, he said.
“It just didn’t make any sense to me. If you couldn’t pay your support, why would you take the driver’s license so they couldn’t get to the job. Why would you take the driver’s license? Things like that are just anomalies in the law that we have to fix,” he said.
All this from a man who originally wanted to be an FBI agent like the “good guys” he watched on TV during his youth in Ravenna. Back then, agents had to have law degrees, so he set his course accordingly.
“I turned out to be a law enforcement officer anyway, but a prosecutor instead of an FBI agent,” he said smiling.
As he faces retirement, Vigluicci said he looks forward to spending time with his children and grandchildren, as well as tinkering with his sports car.
“I’m a sports car aficionado, so I get to play with my toys, and I’ve got a nice chunk of land that needs some attention,” he said.
Traveling is also on the post-career agenda: he and his wife have already booked a Mediterranean cruise to Spain, Monte Carlo, France, Italy and Greece.
“I look forward to de-stressing, to taking this 1,000-pound weight off my shoulders,” he said.
As Vigluicci prepares to turn over his post to Lewandowski, his thoughts return to Roger DiPaolo, Sr. A true mentor, the Ravenna attorney taught him how to try a case and pushed him to seek appointment as Portage County’s prosecutor.
“He gave a very young lawyer an opportunity and a little push into an area I would not have entered otherwise, and it turned out to be a career for me,” Vigluicci said.
Case, and career, closed.
Wendy DiAlesandro is a former Record Publishing Co. reporter and contributing writer for The Portager.