YOUNGSTOWN — The gross sexual imposition trial of Cipriano Ruiz, 45, ended suddenly Wednesday morning after the two assistant prosecutors in the case asked Judge Anthony D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to dismiss the case, which he did.

D’Apolito called jurors into the courtroom afterward and told them the case was over — for them and for Ruiz — because the type of dismissal involved means that the charges cannot be refiled.

He told them that “a good prosecutor is always looking at … what they are going to present to the jury and how that comports with their role and their responsibility.”

He said it “would be very easy sometimes for a prosecutor to keep going forward even though they have doubts about whether it was the right thing to do.” He said the assistant prosecutors in the case — Kevin Day and Daniel Yozwiak — “are good people” and “it would not have been, in their opinion, the right thing to do. I agree.”

He said the issue of dismissal “began yesterday during testimony” by one of the two witnesses after closing arguments were given.

The judge said he had never before in his career “had a case dismissed mid-trial. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t the right thing. It just means it happened for the first time.”

The judge said the attorneys arrived at the courthouse about 8 or 8:30 a.m. and wanted to discuss the issue with the family of the alleged victim, but it took a while to have that meeting. That was necessary before anything more was done, the judge said.

The defense attorneys, Frank Cassese and James N. Melfi, were in the courtroom while that discussion was taking place and answered a question or two posed by the jurors.

Afterward, Cassese commended the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office for “doing the just thing based on the evidence and dismissing the case.” Cassese said Ruiz has “maintained his innocence from the minute he came into my office. I believe that throughout the course of the trial, that came to light and became more apparent.”

Ruiz just said “I am happy that the year of hell me and my family endured for this process is finally over, and I commend the prosecutor for doing the right thing.”

Mahoning County Prosecutor Gina DeGenova said Wednesday that “New evidence came to light, and it would not have been proper for the state of Ohio to proceed. I am so very sorry the victim in the case had to go through jury selection and a partial trial. However, we have an obligation to administer justice, and justice dictated that we not proceed any further in this case.”

She would not comment further on the specifics of the new evidence.

Ruiz was charged with two counts of gross sexual imposition for allegations from August and October of 2022 in Youngstown. Yozwiak said the Ruiz family and the child’s family knew each other.

Yozwiak said during the trial, jurors were going to hear from a school counselor to whom the girl disclosed the incidents, as well as the girl’s mother and the child herself.

Cassese told the jury he thought everyone would agree that “the government can get things wrong. Government policies are formulated with good intent, but sometimes they cause more harm than good.”

He said, “When something is done because it has to be done, not because it should be done, the system fails everybody.”

The “state of Ohio mandates educators to immediately report any allegation of sexual abuse or face criminal prosecution,” and that sounds OK “in theory.” But in this case, a school guidance counselor will testify that she reported the allegation to Mahoning County Children Services, which contacted the Youngstown Police Department, which contacted the Child Advocacy Center.

Several people there interviewed the child for 10 minutes in March 2023. Cassese said he believed that no further investigation took place after that interview.

He said Ruiz grew up in Youngstown and earned a bachelor’s degree in business and started his own business. He inherited quite a lot of money when his father died.

Cassese said there was going to be testimony during the trial “about a house fire, and its extraordinary timing,” though he did not explain further.

He concluded, “We have a duty to protect kids, no doubt. We also have a duty to protect the innocent. We have a duty to thoroughly investigate accusations of this magnitude.”

Have an interesting story? Email Ed Runyan at erunyan@vindy.com