Judge denies new rape trial for retired firefighter who didn’t know his lawyer was about to lose law license

Cornel Penland reads from a statement held by attorney Peter Pattakos in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Nancy Fuerst's courtroom on Wednesday, May 4, 2022.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Penland was convicted of a 2002 rape on March 10, five months after Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor said during an oral argument in disciplinary proceedings that Penland’s attorney, Samuel Smith II, “didn’t know how to be an attorney” and was learning on-the-job “at the expense of his clients.

Penland’s new attorney, Peter Pattakos, said in a statement that Penland plans to appeal his conviction. The woman testified at trial in March that she became homeless when she was 13 and began dancing at strip clubs when she was 15, according to court filings. She also testified that she worked as a prostitute to make enough money to survive.

The accuser said the night that she was raped, her attacker was with a group of men who came into the strip club. She agreed to let them give her a ride home after her shift, and she said that shortly after she got into a car with three men, the driver stopped in an alley near the club. One of them climbed in the backseat and raped her. She testified that she could not recall exactly what happened, just that she was raped, court records say.

He testified that the group paid the woman to have sex after she finished dancing and denied assaulting her or taking her money. “He has had a substantially law-abiding life, but this was a horrible crime,” Fuerst said. “One we can’t ignore.”Pattakos filed a motion for a new trial late last month that argued that Smith, whom the motion described as “a shell of an attorney” at Penland’s trial, denied Penland his right to a competent attorney who is free from any conflict of interest.

Smith also failed to provide Penland with an adequate defense because he was distracted by the fact that “the guillotine was about to come down on his career” and was taking personal calls on breaks during proceedings rather than preparing for the next witness, Pattakos said. Hall said in Wednesday’s hearing that those arguments are better suited for an appeal of his conviction in the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals.

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