YOUNGSTOWN — Longtime defense attorney Lynn Maro has announced her bid to run for Mahoning County prosecutor in the March 2024 primary election.

“I knew when I was in sixth grade that I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to make the community a better place,” she said during a news conference Thursday afternoon in the Mahoning County Courthouse rotunda to launch her campaign.

Maro will be challenging county Prosecutor Gina DeGenova, who the Mahoning County Democratic Party’s central committee appointed earlier this month to fill Paul Gains’ unexpired four-year term. Gains retired in late November.

Maro, who earned a Juris Doctorate degree in December 1990 from the University of Akron School of Law, told more than 100 elected officials, campaign volunteers and others about her plans to make what she feels are needed improvements in the prosecutor’s office.

Key among them are implementing more training for attorneys, establishing greater cooperation with law enforcement and having stronger proactive communications with young attorneys, Maro noted.

From 1992 to 1996, Maro, a 1985 Ursuline High School graduate, worked in the prosecutor’s office civil division. Since 1994, Maro has been in private practice, where she has handled criminal and civil litigation cases and appellate work. In addition, Maro also has handled discrimination and harassment cases, personal injury, labor law and medical malpractice.

“For 11 years, all I did was civil work,” representing firefighters, police officers and others, she said.

Maro also has represented many high-profile defendants, including Robert L. Shelton, 46, of Lithonia, Ga., who pleaded guilty in May 2022 to voluntary manslaughter in the Feb. 9, 2020, killing of Dymond D. Ortello, 34.

Currently, Maro is one of two defense attorneys representing Kimonie Bryant, 26, one of three men charged in the Sept. 21, 2020, killing of 4-year-old Rowan Sweeney and the wounding of four others in a Struthers home in an apparent robbery.

For more than 20 years, too many cases have been dismissed or convictions vacated because evidence was not turned over properly, she contended.

If elected, Maro promises to bring added transparency and a strong work ethic to the office, as well as greater integrity, impartiality and fairness, in an effort to serve and help county residents and make the community better, she added.