For the first election in more than two decades, Summit County residents have two new choices for prosecutor. Democrat Sherri Bevan Walsh was elected prosecutor five times but resigned from office earlier this year, citing health issues.
Voters are deciding between her successor, Democrat Elliot Kolkovich, or his challenger, Republican John Greven, a prominent criminal defense attorney.
Both candidates say they want to focus on serious offenders and gun violence, but they differ in their plans for managing the office.
Kolkovich prioritizes community engagement, workload management
Before being appointed to finish out Bevan Walsh's term, Kolkovich had been an assistant prosecutor in her office, beginning in 2011. He left in 2022 to be an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, before coming back to the office in 2023, serving as a community outreach prosecutor.
This taught him the importance of making connections with community members and educating them about the office, Kolkovich said.
“So much of what you're doing as the elected prosecutor is making sure that you're establishing good relationships throughout the community,” Kolkovich said.
He’d like to expand community engagement if elected, he said. He also wants to improve overall work environment of the office.
“If you're trying to accomplish anything as a county prosecutor, if you're trying to establish principles or goals of prosecution or things that you wanted to fight for justice, you can't do any of those things unless you're taking care of all of your people first,” Kolkovich said. “Everybody who works for you has to be taken care of. They have to come to work every day, feel valued, feel fulfilled, and know that you're doing everything for them to make sure that they're appreciated in their job.”
Kolkovich wants to prioritize prosecuting more serious crimes and seeking diversion or rehabilitation for defendants with substance abuse or mental health issues, he said.
He plans to streamline indictments – meaning, focusing on the most accurate charge for a crime, rather than adding on several different charges that could also apply.
“We’ve really tried to take the philosophy that the indictment is what we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” Kolkovich said. “The flip side is that if this is what we can prove beyond a reasonable doubt, that we're not going to amend a charge or dismiss because we're not stacking charges, we're not putting five on when only one crime is done.”
Greven says office is over-indicting, wants to “separate wheat from the chaff”
John Greven has been an attorney in Summit County for 30 years. He’s worked on eight death penalty cases and nearly 60 murder trials, he said.
Bevan Walsh stepping down has opened the door for a new chapter, he said.
“Summit County has had a politician as a prosecutor for the past 23 years, and I think it's time to put somebody in there who has a lot of courtroom experience,” Greven said.
The prosecutor’s office is bringing too many charges, leading to over-indicting, Greven said. He says he’d like to focus on more serious cases rather than prosecuting what he called low-hanging fruit – lower-level crimes.
“I am more interested not so much in the quantity of convictions, but in the quality of convictions,” Greven said. “I just think more … time, energy, effort, resources need to be put to prosecuting the people who are dangerous.”
Greven would like to expand diversion programs, he added.
“You are going to have people, at one end of the spectrum, who have mental health problems or substance abuse problems who commit relatively minor crimes. Those are the people that need to be dealt with as far as trying to get them help,” Greven said. “People at the other end of the spectrum, the shooters, the robbers, the rapists and people like that, we need to focus more time, more resources, more energy on those people.”
Power of the prosecutor
County prosecutors have discretion over which charges to pursue, if any at all. That makes them one of most powerful positions in the criminal justice system, said University of Akron law professor Michael Gentithes.
Prosecutors also decide what evidence to present to a grand jury and have influence over which defendants get indicted, Gentithes said.
“There’s an old trope that a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich if a prosecutor told them to, and that's largely because there's an imbalance of power and background knowledge about the legal system,” Gentithes said. “Most citizens serving on a grand jury may not have much experience in the legal system. The only person in the room with legal experience is often the prosecutor themselves.”
Kolkovich agreed that prosecutors have significant power. If elected, he would apply consistent standards across similar cases – but evaluate each one individually, he added.
“If you have someone who's never been in trouble before, should their sentence be the same as someone who's been in trouble a lot and been to prison a few times? If someone has a substance abuse or doesn't have a substance abuse issue, how does that impact what your recommendation is?” Kolkovich said. “You just want to make sure that you have a good set of principles to keep going back towards, to make sure that you're always looking at the same factors.”
Greven has seen the power of the prosecutor from the other side of the courtroom, as a defense attorney.
It’s an “incredible amount of power” that needs to be used wisely, he said.
“Which is why I talk about focusing more on the front end of cases, because I think if we do that … we can make sure that that power is used more wisely and indict and really go after the people that need it and try to get help for the people that maybe don't,” Greven said.
Overall priorities for Summit County
County prosecutors are also tasked with setting overall priorities for the office, Gentithes added.
“Really, their accountability is to the voters themselves for how they prioritize those crimes, what they're pursuing and sort of what overall policies the office is oriented towards in during their tenure,” Gentithes said.
The county’s number one issue is gun violence, Kolkovich said. He plans to work with Akron Police Chief Brian Harding to make connections and build trust in the community to better prosecute and prevent shootings.
“Maybe these nonfatal shooters are tomorrow's fatal shooter, and one of the biggest blocks to prosecuting some of those cases is cooperation, getting cooperation from witnesses, from victims,” Kolkovich said. “When you're having conversations, you're constantly trying to establish trust in the system, trust in you, trust in the process. And I think that one of the main focuses, on top of consistency, is establishing a reestablishing and maintaining trust in our office.”
Greven agreed that guns are the biggest issue, as well as fentanyl. He plans to prioritize those cases over minor drug crimes.
“I'm also a big believer in different drugs needed to be treated differently. So somebody that has a whole bunch of fentanyl, that's a lot worse than somebody who has a whole bunch of marijuana or other things,” Greven said. “Fentanyl is what's killing people, not the other stuff.”
The candidates differ slightly in their approach to managing the office’s caseload. The office is set to indict upwards of 4,500 cases this year, according to the prosecutor's office.
Greven wants to impose a vertical prosecution system – where the same prosecutor follows the case from start to finish – which he says will save time and help with quality convictions.
Kolkovich says he’s explored doing that for the most serious cases, but it’s not realistic for an office that handles thousands of cases each year.
Instead, he says he’s recently restructured the team so prosecutors can more easily split up the workload and cover for each other when necessary to try to decrease burnout.
The county has not had a Republican prosecutor since Maureen O’Connor, who went on to be Ohio's lieutenant governor and Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. O’Connor was prosecutor from 1995 to 1999, just before Bevan Walsh.
Greven worked for the office under O’Connor, he said.
What sets Greven apart from Kolkovich, he said, is his 30 years of experience.
“I think with recent retirements, my experience is probably unmatched in Summit County, as far as courtroom experience," Greven said. "That courtroom experience helps me, and I think can help my assistants, in separating the ‘wheat from the chaff.’”
Kolkovich said he's the best person for the job because of the time and attention he gives to each case, as well as his staff.
“I spend every minute of every day thinking of how I could improve the lives of the people that work in our office, which in turn is going to lead, how are we going to be able to best keep our communities safe while still reflecting the principles and values of our individual and constitutional rights?” Kolkovich said.
Kolkovich lives in Fairlawn with his wife and two young children. Greven has an adult daughter and resides in Green with his two dogs.
