Prosecutor Clears DeWine and Deters

A citizen's affidavit asks a prosecutor to look. It does not charge anyone. Gmoser treated the internship email as a request rather than an order, which is why he found no crime and closed the file, and that decision cannot be appealed.

Butler County Prosecutor Mike Gmoser, named special prosecutor in late September, released his report on Thursday, Nov. 12. He found former Hamilton County Juvenile Judge Tracie Hunter's allegations against Ohio Supreme Court Justices Pat DeWine and Joe Deters without merit. He wrote that no arrest or prosecution shall take place, and he called her motive revenge.

Hunter filed the felony affidavit in December 2025 as a private citizen, accusing both men of an unlawful interest in a public contract. The center of it is a 2017 email DeWine sent when he was a Hamilton County judge and Deters was the county prosecutor, asking Deters to find a summer internship for DeWine's son, then a freshman at Miami University. She also claimed the special prosecutors in her own 2014 case were business associates of Deters, and that Deters' brother, then-commissioner Dennis Deters, should not have voted to pay for her prosecution.

Gmoser wrote that the email was a request, not an order, and that neither man used his office to force the hire. He found that Scott Croswell, the prosecutor Deters recommended, was a friend of more than 40 years and not a business associate, and that Merlyn Shiverdecker joined at Croswell's request. Dennis Deters, he wrote, cast one of three votes to pay an invoice and did the job the law gave him.

Hunter was convicted in 2014 of that same offense after she gave her brother confidential court documents. She was removed from the bench. In 2019, when she was ordered to serve six months, officers dragged her from a courtroom. She served 75 days. She has not regained her law license. She wrote on Facebook that the justices clearly broke the law. Deters said he needed time to read the report. DeWine did not respond to questions about it.