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WARREN -- An attorney with the Ohio Public Defender's Office has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to disqualify Warren Municipal Court Judge Natasha Natale from presiding over the case of a man charged with two misdemeanor charges in a 2025 assault at Warren G. Harding High School.
The affidavit seeks disqualification of Natale from the case "because her words and conduct in the ... case demonstrate a fixed, anticipatory judgment concerning (the defendant's) conduct and guilt and, independently, create an objectively reasonable appearance that she cannot remain a neutral arbiter in the pending case."
Assistant Public Defender Shawna Merkich filed an affidavit of disqualification July 23 with the state's top court on a criminal trespassing charge filed in Warren Municipal Court against Keylen Jackson, 19, of Youngstown.
Jackson was charged initially with misdemeanor assault and misdemeanor criminal trespass, but the 11th District Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Jackson on July 13, 2026, in an appeal filed by the Ohio Public Defender's Office and found that the assault charge should be dismissed.
The charges stemmed from an Aug. 21, 2025, incident in which four people wearing hooded sweatshirts with the hoods up, one of them allegedly Jackson, approached the entryway of the school and an altercation took place involving a student exiting the school through the doorway. The criminal trespassing charge alleges that Jackson was on school grounds without privilege to do so, the affidavit states. It does not accuse him of assaulting the student.
Merkich stated that she was present for an Oct. 7, 2025, hearing on the cases when the Warren Law Department filed a motion to dismiss the assault charge. The reason was that after reviewing the school surveillance video, a city assistant law director stated that Jackson "was not involved in the assault." During an in-chamber discussion, Natale asked to see the surveillance video. Merkich provided Natale with a copy and a still image from the video showing Jackson.
"After reviewing the video and an identifying image, Judge Natale stated, 'Well, it's complicity then.' I responded that I could not defend my clients against charges that 'someone makes up' after the fact but only against the allegations actually charged." The filing indicates Merkich was referring to Natale as the person making up charges.
The filing states that "No party raised complicity before Judge Natale introduced it." Natale denied the motion to dismiss that day. On Nov. 6, the city law department again filed a motion to dismiss, and Natale set the motion for a Jan. 2, 2026, hearing. At the hearing, Natale had the video played in open court. Natale "acknowledged that the video clearly showed Mr. Jackson was not the person who attacked the alleged victim."
An assistant law director stated that the officer who filed the charge now believed that Jackson's assault charge should be dismissed, but Natale "suggested that the (assistant law director) personally interview the alleged victim, urged additional investigation and instructed the (assistant law director), the defense and the entire courtroom on the distinction between direct and circumstantial evidence and the law governing complicity," the filing states. On Jan. 6, 2026, Natale again denied the dismissal.
Her judgment entry contained "five pages of factual findings about why Mr. Jackson and three unidentified people went to the school, why they approached a particular door, what inferences should be drawn from their clothing and movements and what Mr. Jackson's conduct meant," the Merkich filing states.
The judge's second dismissal entry is included with the Merkich filing. In the ruling, Natale stated that the first of the four individuals who entered the school together that day in hooded sweatshirts, who remained unidentified, initiated the physical attack on the named victim. "The defendant, who had originally been fourth in line, ran forward and became the second closest person to the victim while the victim was being attacked by the unidentified individual," Natale's entry states.
"The video does not show the defendant making physical contact with the victim. However, it does show the defendant repositioning himself in close proximity to the victim during the attack. Within a short period of time, the unidentified attacker began to flee and only after the attacker began to run did the defendant also run and follow him," Natale stated.
"The defendant was the only individual apprehended at the scene by the Warren Police Department. The other three individuals fled and were not apprehended," the ruling states. Additional information provided to the court included that it was August yet all four individuals wore hooded sweatshirts with their hoods up, and the four individuals arrived in the same vehicle and remained in the school parking lot about 45 minutes before parking, exiting the vehicle and approaching the school at dismissal time, the judge's ruling stated.
Merkich's filing states that "Most significantly, Judge Natale characterized Mr. Jackson's departure as 'flight, which is consciousness of guilt'" and stated that prosecutors appeared to possess sufficient evidence to prosecute Jackson under a complicity theory.
The July 23, 2026, appeals court ruling states that the appeals court had reviewed a similar case involving Natale "under similar circumstances of this matter." The ruling states that the appeals court was ruling "in line with the court's precedent" in the earlier decision, and Natale "abused (her) discretion" in the Jackson matter.
The earlier decision was State v. Glover and involved the Warren Law Department appealing a decision by Natale overruling the Warren Law Department's motion to dismiss a charge of aggravated menacing against a man on the grounds of insufficient evidence. The appeals court reversed Natale's ruling.
In that matter, Natale "suggested that the (Warren assistant law director) could amend the charge," but the Warren assistant law director stated that the alleged victim of the "threatening behavior" was not present at the time it was alleged to have happened.
The ruling in the Glover case stated that the question they were asked to decide in the appeal "involves the interplay of ... two separate but co-equal branches of our government" -- judiciary and executive (meaning law enforcement).
It noted that federal courts "have had occasion to offer insight into these roles while discussing the separation of powers doctrine. For instance, the Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly emphasized that" decisions on what charge to file or bring before a grand jury "are decisions that generally rest in the prosecution's discretion."
In the Jackson ruling on the assault charge, the 11th District stated that the appeals panel "reviewed a strikingly similar casing arising from the same trial court (Natale)." The ruling states that "these cases involve the "interplay of the respective roles of two separate but co-equal branches of our government."
It added, "Without the separation of powers, 'there can be no liberty, where the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person or body of magistrates.'"
The ruling added that a trial court's discretion in determining whether a motion to dismiss should be granted "is limited by the separation of powers -- the decision whether to prosecute and the decision as to the charge to be filed, rests in the discretion of the prosecuting attorney."
In the Glover case, Natale dismissed the aggravated menacing charge April 23, 2026, following an April 13, 2026, ruling by the 11th District Court of Appeals, according to Warren Municipal Court records. Glover was found guilty of violating a protection order, which was not part of the appeal.