The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Attorney gets jail for bomb threats, lying in murder case
A lawyer who admitted making bomb threats against local courthouses and lying to police about a Cleveland murder was sentenced May 23 to six months in jail, 350 hours of community service and three years of probation.
Gregory J. Moore, 43, of Sagamore Hills, previously pleaded guilty to two counts of inducing panic before Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John D. Sutula.
The first 90 days of Moore’s sentence will begin June 1. He then will serve one week a month until he serves 180 days total. He will be on GPS monitoring until his jail term is completed.
Moore’s law license is suspended indefinitely pending a decision by the Ohio Supreme Court, said Kathleen Caffrey, spokeswoman for the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office.
Moore originally was charged with making bomb threats from his cell phone in January, May and July 2012 against courthouses in Lake, Geauga and Cuyahoga counties, prosecutors said. He admitted to the incidents in Lake and Cuyahoga counties as part of the plea deal.
On the day of each of the bomb threats, Moore was scheduled to begin a trial.
Moore also pleaded guilty to one count of falsification for providing false information to Cleveland detectives in the 2013 murder of Aliza Sherman.
Moore was Sherman’s divorce attorney. He had an appointment to meet his client on March 24, 2013. Her divorce trial was scheduled to begin the next day. However, Moore was unprepared for trial and the judge warned him there would be no more continuances in the case, prosecutors said.
Sherman, a 53-yearold Beachwood nurse, was stabbed repeatedly outside 75 Erieview Plaza the day before her trial was to start. Her murder was seen on security footage and showed an image of someone wearing a hood, but nobody has been charged in the murder.
According to police, Moore sent text messages to the victim’s cellphone just prior to and after she was killed. Those messages stated he was in his office, but phone records and witness statements proved he was not in the building. He then made false statements to homicide detectives when questioned, according to prosecutors.
Moore was represented by attorneys Kevin Spellacy and James McDonnell.