WARREN, Ohio - The case of Liberty School superintendent Joseph Nohra on six felony charges has been sent back to Trumbull County Common Pleas Court for reconsideration.

The Eleventh District Court of Appeals this week overturned the county court’s earlier ruling by Judge Ronald Rice, who dismissed six of eleven charges handed up by a grand jury last year.

Nohra allegedly recorded videos of private conversations among five district employees with a hidden camera in a carbon monoxide detector near their desk in the Liberty School bus garage.

Nohra was originally set to go on trial this past January. However, Nohra requested the court to reconsider its previous ruling denying his motion to dismiss the indictment for vagueness.

Defense attorney David Betras argued that the law lacks sufficient guidance to place an ordinary citizen on notice of the standards of conduct they prohibit and invite arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.

While prosecutors argued that the language of the statute refers to any communication where someone has a reasonable expectation of privacy, Nohra countered that the recorded conversations occurred in areas where there was no reasonable expectation of privacy.

Betras said Nohra had installed the camera with the consent of the school board.

Trumbull County assistant prosecutor Chuck Morrow told the appeals court that no law supports Judge Rice’s ruling on the state wiretap law, which according to Morrow is modeled after a federal statute.

In sending the case back to Rice’s court for reconsideration, the appeals court declined to address allegations that Ohio’s wiretap law is vague.

Instead, the judges ruled that the county court made a premature determination that law was vague without first holding evidentiary hearings, hearing testimony, or having exhibits admitted as evidence to challenge the constitutionality of the law.

Nohra, formerly the Superintendent in the Struthers School District and Chief Operating Officer with the Youngstown City School District, took the job as Liberty superintendent in 2017.  He resigned from that post in 2020.

If convicted on all six felony counts of interception of wire, oral or electronic communication, and five misdemeanor counts of interfering with civil rights, Nohra could be sentenced to 11 and a half years in prison.