CINCINNATI — Connie Pillich’s first day on the job as Hamilton County’s top prosecutor was a snow day. With the courthouse closed due to the winter storm on Monday, she swore in her assistant prosecutors on Tuesday.
It was an unusual way to start her historic tenure.
She is the first elected female to hold the high-profile position, and the first Democrat to break the Republican stronghold in the office in nearly a century.
Pillich did not have the prosecutorial experience or the big campaign coffers of her opponent, Republican incumbent Melissa Powers, but she still won with 51% of the vote.
“I want to make sure that people know that I mean business,” Pillich said during a Jan. 3 interview. “We’re going to make some big changes this year.”
Ahead of her official first day, Pillich was sworn in on Dec. 20, 2024, along with other newly elected county officials, by Hamilton County Domestic Relations Judge Anne Flottman.
One of Pillich’s first challenges is hiring more prosecutors.
“The number of vacancies changes daily,” Pillich said.
Since her election, 23 prosecutors have either left their jobs or announced their retirements. She has already hired seven new prosecutors and expects to be fully staffed soon. The number of prosecutors in the office fluctuates between 110 and 120.
Most of those vacancies are in the civil and appellate divisions, where prosecutors do not need to be in court each day. Pillich said the office has enough criminal prosecutors to handle cases in court in the interim.
“We’re trying to triage right now, if you will, because people are leaving and I’m coming in brand new,” she said. “But I’m confident that we’ll be fully staffed and we’ll be able to do our job for everybody who’s depending on us.”
When she got elected, she asked each member of the staff to apply, with a resume. A handful did not reapply including Hamilton County Republican Party Chair Russell Mock, and a party vice-chair Triffon Callos. She also asked two prosecutors to resign, Matthew Broo and David Wood, she said.
“I think in total we’ve got 175 resumes. Most are from current employees, and most will stay. Eight have taken jobs elsewhere after submitting their resumes before I had a chance to talk to them … so I think there’s going to be a lot of ebb and flow for the first month or so,” Pillich said on Jan. 3.
“We hope that the courts will work with us to ease us through the transition so we can make sure everything is taken care of,” she said, assuring that there will be enough prosecutors to handle criminal cases in court during the interim.
Longtime first assistant prosecutor and felony chief Mark Piepmeier plans to retire in late April but has been working closely with Pillich and ensuring there is sufficient staff: “he’s been incredibly supportive and cooperative with the transition,” she said.
Pillich has named Heidi Rosales, a former assistant city of Cincinnati prosecutor, as Piepmeier’s replacement.
Since the election, she said she’s met with many city and county leaders, law enforcement, community groups, members of the Cincinnati Regional Business Committee, Western & Southern Financial Group President and CEO John Barrett and others.
Pillich never before served as a criminal prosecutor but is a U.S. Air Force veteran and a former Ohio state legislator, who also studied law. She started private practice, filed civil cases, and served as a public defender for some criminal felony cases. She said her military background as an officer, and her master's degree in business administration will help her organize and manage the prosecutor’s office.
“A lot of people are curious about who I am and what my goals are and frankly a lot of them don’t know anything about my background either. So they’re very curious and I’m happy to meet with anybody,” she said. “There is a lot of concern about crime on the street, particularly Government Square.”
She said many people are impressed with the work community and business groups have done to reduce youth crime downtown, with some success.
“One of my goals is to collaborate across the community to make sure we keep programs like that in place, and let's find out if they work long-term,” she said, relying on data to track progress.
She also wants to be responsive and involved with the community.
“How can I be available and accessible to like the Cincinnati Business Committee, the Cincinnati Regional Business Committee, the sports teams, the other businesses,” she said. “I’m not going to limit my vision to downtown … I’m not going to just focus on the courthouse. I want to be part of the solution across the community.”
She also met with police chiefs from Evendale, Delhi and Sycamore Township who are concerned about cross-department cooperation, supporting mayors courts, and how long officers have to sit in court awaiting their cases which impacts overtime costs and staffing issues.
She wants to regularly attend neighborhood council and township trustee meetings across the county, as well as groups such as the Rotary Club.
“We’re going to make some big changes this year,” she said. “I want to make sure that people know that I mean business.”
She plans to create a formal training program for prosecutors on trial practice, choosing a jury, rules of evidence, and ethics.
“We’re also going to be embracing new technology so that our office can talk to the sheriff, can talk to the Cincinnati police department, can talk to the court clerk. And this going to be a way to upgrade for the first time our case management system in over 30 years,” she said. “We’re going to use software to track evidence so no one can claim that we didn’t turn it over and we can find out where it is.”
This new technology will allow police to upload evidence right off their computers, and as the coroner gets DNA evidence or test results, that can also be loaded in. The system will show when the evidence is delivered to prosecutors and attorneys, so no one can claim they did not receive it.
“Because if we’re convicting the wrong person that’s embarrassing to the office, if we’re convicting the right person but it gets overturned on appeal on a technicality, that does not keep us safe. Neither way keeps us safe,” she said.
As for juvenile court, she said she wants to make sure those prosecutors have more training on youth development and what’s unique and specific to those proceedings.
“The second thing I want to do is reassure everyone – I want to keep people safe,” she said. “If that means keeping a violent offender off the streets, I’m going to do everything I can to make that happen. If that means binding a juvenile over to adult court, that’s going to happen sometimes. I can’t promise that it won’t.”
Pillich said she met with the city of Cincinnati’s chief data officer and confirmed that the spike in juvenile crime since 2021 is real.
“I want to be part of the solution that finds ways to reduce the future occurrence of juvenile crime,” she said.
Pillich said she also wants to professionalize the prosecutor’s office, institute internal audits after serious cases, and be open, available and responsive to the media.
