Monday, October 09, 2006
James F. McCarty
Plain Dealer Reporter
John Wayne Judd gets a kick out of watching television shows and movies about guys who repossess automobiles - repo men, like him.
The on-screen lives of repo men bear little resemblance, however, to Judd's real-life experiences.
"Guys coming at you with baseball bats. Guys coming at you with shotguns. Guys ramming your car with theirs. That's what really happens," said Judd, 44, of Madison.
"I had a woman hit me in the face with a brick once. Broke the bridge of my nose."
That's the price repo men pay for forcibly taking back cars from drivers who don't pay for them but refuse to give them back without a fight.
It's a job that requires repo men to walk a fine line between serving as an arm of law enforcement and breaking the law - a line that Judd used to cross, but no more, he insists.
Some police officers and prosecutors don't believe him, however, and they don't appreciate the repo man's line of work, he said.
"Whenever I get attacked, the police say, 'It's a civil matter,' " Judd said.
"With anyone else it would be a criminal case."
A repo job gone bad last December got Judd stuck in the predicament he's in now.
He and his partner, Bill Hale, received a contract to repossess a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix whose owner had never made a payment.
He tracked the car to a house on Washington Park Boulevard in Newburgh Heights that belonged to the father of the car owner's girlfriend.
A girl in the house spotted Judd snooping around the garage, so he said he identified himself as a repo man and flashed his repo badge with the name of his company, Nationwide Recovery. But the car wasn't there, and the residents shooed Judd off the property.
They called the Newburgh Heights police and accused Judd of entering their house and identifying himself as a police officer.
The police weren't sympathetic when they found Judd and Hale parked at the end of the street waiting for the Grand Prix's return.
An officer cuffed the men and threatened to spray Mace in Hale's mouth when he protested, Judd said.
The officers allowed Judd and Hale to leave without being arrested after their repo job paperwork checked out.
Ohio law gives repo men the right to enter private property as long as they don't "breach the peace" - a vague description preventing them from breaking into a home or garage or from threatening anyone.
But Judd was still angry with the police officer, whom he accused of roughing up Hale. So he called Newburgh Heights officials the next day to complain.
Judd said Police Chief Michael McKeon and Law Director David Maistros told him in blunt and profane language what he could do with his complaints and threatened to have him indicted if he didn't drop it.
A month later, on Jan. 11, a county grand jury issued a two-count indictment charging Judd with impersonation of a police officer and burglary.
McKeon and Maistros have both resigned for unrelated reasons.
McKeon, who worked in the village for nearly two years, said last month that he negotiated a buyout with the village during its investigation of complaints against him. Maistros is now law director in Twinsburg.
McKeon could not be reached to comment. Maistros said he had talked to the mayor about the case but did not recall talking to Judd.
For six months, the case worked its way through the Cuyahoga County courts. The prosecutors urged Judd to accept a plea bargain to a lesser charge, and Judd said they made their displeasure known when he refused.
"Why should I?" Judd said. "I didn't do anything wrong. We had all the proper paperwork to repossess the car that night, and the police let us go. They said we didn't do anything wrong."
Things got worse for Judd on Aug. 24. About 5 p.m., Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Debra Obed told Cleveland police that someone in a red pickup truck had bumped her car several times, pushing her into the intersection of Detroit Avenue and Berea Road, said Sgt. Rich Peters, who is investigating.
Obed was the prosecutor in Judd's Newburgh Heights case. She told investigators that she "had a feeling" Judd was the driver of the other car but that the driver had concealed his appearance with a ball cap and sunglasses.
Shortly before midnight, Judd returned home with his three children, ages 16, 10 and 7, and a 12-year-old neighbor who played on a youth baseball team Judd coaches. They had been to a Lake County Captains baseball game in Eastlake.
A team of Cuyahoga County sheriff's deputies was waiting to arrest him, and they took him to the County Jail.
The deputies were in no mood to listen to Judd protest that he was 40 miles away at the time of the incident - and that he could prove it.
"Even if he was Superman he couldn't have done this," said Judd's lawyer, John Carlin.
Judd said that he is no saint - he did a few stints in prison in his younger days for passing bad checks and for an attempted felonious assault - but that he has cleaned up his act since then. He said he had no motive to engage a prosecutor in a bumper-car battle.
Common Pleas Judge Nancy Fuerst, who signed Judd's arrest papers, didn't hear Judd's alibi until eight days after his arrest.
Judd said it would have been impossible for him to have driven the truck that knocked into Obed's car.
He produced witnesses and receipts to support his contention that he was buying soda pop and pizza at Georgio's in Madison at the time Obed said her car was struck. He said he hasn't owned or driven a red pickup truck in more than a year.
Carlin was fuming by the time Fuerst agreed to hold a hearing on Sept. 1. He said he had visited Fuerst's courtroom four times a day for a week until the judge acknowledged his presence.
"She was going to let him sit in there until Labor Day," Carlin said. "It was just a mean, nasty act. We know that they know [Judd] didn't do it, but they just wanted to mess with him."
Fuerst agreed to release Judd on a writ of habeas corpus - thus conceding that Judd was being held in jail illegally. But she didn't file his release papers until more than six hours later.
Fuerst blames Carlin for Judd's eight days in jail. She said she declined to release Judd because Carlin had failed to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus until the seventh day. She denied noticing Carlin waiting outside her office.
"I don't know what [Carlin] was doing," the judge said. "I don't even know if he was here."
No charges have been filed in the Obed road rage case, but prosecutors praised Fuerst for taking steps to rein in Judd.
"Given the significant risk posed to [Obed's] physical safety, the judge prudently exercised her legal authority to revoke this defendant's bond," said prosecutor's office spokeswoman Michele Tolar.
The Obed case has had serious ramifications for the Newburgh Heights case.
At Carlin's request, Fuerst removed herself from the case. She had a difficult time explaining her decision, however, according to a transcript of the hearing.
"The court sees that the way things have developed, that this - in fact, the - in view of this new finding, that in - and what has come before, that in order to start, I agree with Mr. Carlin, with a clean slate here, I am going to order the case - or request that the case be reassigned to another judge and we'll do that," Fuerst said.
Carlin resigned as Judd's lawyer, figuring he may be called as a witness to testify in Judd's defense.
Assistant County Prosecutor Rick Bell, head of the Major Trials Unit, replaced Obed on the case with two of the office's rising stars, Matthew Golish and Jennifer Driscoll.
The new judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold, scheduled Judd's trial for Oct. 17.
Judd's wife, Sandy, said she worries more about her husband when he's in court than when he's on a repo job, and she can't wait until the case is over.
"This has been a nightmare for us," she said.
"In court, you have no control over what other people are doing with your life. Your life is in a whirlwind until a final verdict is delivered.
"When is this all going to stop?"
James F. McCarty
Plain Dealer Reporter
John Wayne Judd gets a kick out of watching television shows and movies about guys who repossess automobiles - repo men, like him.
The on-screen lives of repo men bear little resemblance, however, to Judd's real-life experiences.
"Guys coming at you with baseball bats. Guys coming at you with shotguns. Guys ramming your car with theirs. That's what really happens," said Judd, 44, of Madison.
"I had a woman hit me in the face with a brick once. Broke the bridge of my nose."
That's the price repo men pay for forcibly taking back cars from drivers who don't pay for them but refuse to give them back without a fight.
It's a job that requires repo men to walk a fine line between serving as an arm of law enforcement and breaking the law - a line that Judd used to cross, but no more, he insists.
Some police officers and prosecutors don't believe him, however, and they don't appreciate the repo man's line of work, he said.
"Whenever I get attacked, the police say, 'It's a civil matter,' " Judd said.
"With anyone else it would be a criminal case."
A repo job gone bad last December got Judd stuck in the predicament he's in now.
He and his partner, Bill Hale, received a contract to repossess a 1999 Pontiac Grand Prix whose owner had never made a payment.
He tracked the car to a house on Washington Park Boulevard in Newburgh Heights that belonged to the father of the car owner's girlfriend.
A girl in the house spotted Judd snooping around the garage, so he said he identified himself as a repo man and flashed his repo badge with the name of his company, Nationwide Recovery. But the car wasn't there, and the residents shooed Judd off the property.
They called the Newburgh Heights police and accused Judd of entering their house and identifying himself as a police officer.
The police weren't sympathetic when they found Judd and Hale parked at the end of the street waiting for the Grand Prix's return.
An officer cuffed the men and threatened to spray Mace in Hale's mouth when he protested, Judd said.
The officers allowed Judd and Hale to leave without being arrested after their repo job paperwork checked out.
Ohio law gives repo men the right to enter private property as long as they don't "breach the peace" - a vague description preventing them from breaking into a home or garage or from threatening anyone.
But Judd was still angry with the police officer, whom he accused of roughing up Hale. So he called Newburgh Heights officials the next day to complain.
Judd said Police Chief Michael McKeon and Law Director David Maistros told him in blunt and profane language what he could do with his complaints and threatened to have him indicted if he didn't drop it.
A month later, on Jan. 11, a county grand jury issued a two-count indictment charging Judd with impersonation of a police officer and burglary.
McKeon and Maistros have both resigned for unrelated reasons.
McKeon, who worked in the village for nearly two years, said last month that he negotiated a buyout with the village during its investigation of complaints against him. Maistros is now law director in Twinsburg.
McKeon could not be reached to comment. Maistros said he had talked to the mayor about the case but did not recall talking to Judd.
For six months, the case worked its way through the Cuyahoga County courts. The prosecutors urged Judd to accept a plea bargain to a lesser charge, and Judd said they made their displeasure known when he refused.
"Why should I?" Judd said. "I didn't do anything wrong. We had all the proper paperwork to repossess the car that night, and the police let us go. They said we didn't do anything wrong."
Things got worse for Judd on Aug. 24. About 5 p.m., Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Debra Obed told Cleveland police that someone in a red pickup truck had bumped her car several times, pushing her into the intersection of Detroit Avenue and Berea Road, said Sgt. Rich Peters, who is investigating.
Obed was the prosecutor in Judd's Newburgh Heights case. She told investigators that she "had a feeling" Judd was the driver of the other car but that the driver had concealed his appearance with a ball cap and sunglasses.
Shortly before midnight, Judd returned home with his three children, ages 16, 10 and 7, and a 12-year-old neighbor who played on a youth baseball team Judd coaches. They had been to a Lake County Captains baseball game in Eastlake.
A team of Cuyahoga County sheriff's deputies was waiting to arrest him, and they took him to the County Jail.
The deputies were in no mood to listen to Judd protest that he was 40 miles away at the time of the incident - and that he could prove it.
"Even if he was Superman he couldn't have done this," said Judd's lawyer, John Carlin.
Judd said that he is no saint - he did a few stints in prison in his younger days for passing bad checks and for an attempted felonious assault - but that he has cleaned up his act since then. He said he had no motive to engage a prosecutor in a bumper-car battle.
Common Pleas Judge Nancy Fuerst, who signed Judd's arrest papers, didn't hear Judd's alibi until eight days after his arrest.
Judd said it would have been impossible for him to have driven the truck that knocked into Obed's car.
He produced witnesses and receipts to support his contention that he was buying soda pop and pizza at Georgio's in Madison at the time Obed said her car was struck. He said he hasn't owned or driven a red pickup truck in more than a year.
Carlin was fuming by the time Fuerst agreed to hold a hearing on Sept. 1. He said he had visited Fuerst's courtroom four times a day for a week until the judge acknowledged his presence.
"She was going to let him sit in there until Labor Day," Carlin said. "It was just a mean, nasty act. We know that they know [Judd] didn't do it, but they just wanted to mess with him."
Fuerst agreed to release Judd on a writ of habeas corpus - thus conceding that Judd was being held in jail illegally. But she didn't file his release papers until more than six hours later.
Fuerst blames Carlin for Judd's eight days in jail. She said she declined to release Judd because Carlin had failed to file a petition for a writ of habeas corpus until the seventh day. She denied noticing Carlin waiting outside her office.
"I don't know what [Carlin] was doing," the judge said. "I don't even know if he was here."
No charges have been filed in the Obed road rage case, but prosecutors praised Fuerst for taking steps to rein in Judd.
"Given the significant risk posed to [Obed's] physical safety, the judge prudently exercised her legal authority to revoke this defendant's bond," said prosecutor's office spokeswoman Michele Tolar.
The Obed case has had serious ramifications for the Newburgh Heights case.
At Carlin's request, Fuerst removed herself from the case. She had a difficult time explaining her decision, however, according to a transcript of the hearing.
"The court sees that the way things have developed, that this - in fact, the - in view of this new finding, that in - and what has come before, that in order to start, I agree with Mr. Carlin, with a clean slate here, I am going to order the case - or request that the case be reassigned to another judge and we'll do that," Fuerst said.
Carlin resigned as Judd's lawyer, figuring he may be called as a witness to testify in Judd's defense.
Assistant County Prosecutor Rick Bell, head of the Major Trials Unit, replaced Obed on the case with two of the office's rising stars, Matthew Golish and Jennifer Driscoll.
The new judge, Shirley Strickland Saffold, scheduled Judd's trial for Oct. 17.
Judd's wife, Sandy, said she worries more about her husband when he's in court than when he's on a repo job, and she can't wait until the case is over.
"This has been a nightmare for us," she said.
"In court, you have no control over what other people are doing with your life. Your life is in a whirlwind until a final verdict is delivered.
"When is this all going to stop?"
posted by Dave at 9:13 AM
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