Cleveland.com: Lorain County prosecutor blasts his predecessors, claiming they withheld evidence in abuse case

The case against Nancy Smith is again before a Lorain County judge. The 64-year-old Lorain woman has been trying to clear her name for decades.

A Lorain County jury convicted Smith and Joseph Allen, 68, in 1994 stemming from allegations by parents of children in a Head Start program. Authorities alleged that Smith, a bus driver for the program, took the children to Allen, who abused them.  Smith says she never met Allen until the day of their trial.

Smith was sentenced to 30 to 90 years in prison, while Allen was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences. In recent years, defense attorneys and the Ohio Innocence Project (OIP) at the University of Cincinnati College of Law reviewed Smith’s case and have sought to have charges, which lead to wrongful convictions, dismissed.

Smith, an OIP client, served 15 years of prison before being freed in 2009 and has been allowed to remain free after accepting a resentencing deal to avoid going back to prison.

Smith’s case got some help from a Lorain County prosecutor this past week who blasted the state's previous handling of the case against Smith and Allen saying evidence was withheld which led to wrongful convictions.

Prosecutor J.D. Tomlinson told a judge that the allegations against Joseph Allen and Nancy Smith, who were convicted in an infamous abuse case in 1994, “did not occur, that each defendant is factually innocent of all charges alleged in the indictments.”

Tomlinson told Lorain County Common Pleas Judge D. Christopher Cook that he wants to dismiss the cases against Allen and Smith. The judge said he would rule on whether to grant Smith and Allen a new trial Feb. 3.

Read the full court proceedings account in Cleveland.com

The case was also covered by the Chronicle Telegram and is available online

Nancy Smith seated next to fellow OIP client Clarence Elkins at an Ohio Innocence Project event in 2018. Photo by UC Creative + Brand.