Saleh Awadallah has been an attorney since 1994, and an Assistant Prosecuting Attorney in the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office since 1998. Saleh supervises the Major Trial Unit, where he is responsible for the intake, charging, supervision, and assignment of all homicide, including capital murder cases and felony sexual assault and child abuse cases in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland, Ohio).
Since 2013 he has worked extensively in matters involving the response to the opiate epidemic. The Cuyahoga County Prosecutors Office has taken the lead in the State of Ohio indicting and prosecuting drug dealers for homicide charges for fatal opiate overdose deaths. To date there have been over 40 opiate overdose homicide cases brought in Cuyahoga County. Saleh has lectured on a variety of subjects including at a number of the Ohio Attorney General’s trainings on Opiate Overdose Prosecutions.
Saleh has first chaired numerous jury trials, including child sexual and physical abuse cases, rape cases, and aggravated murder cases. Saleh first chaired three capital murder cases, securing guilty verdicts and death sentences in all three. Saleh has argued before the Eighth District Court of Appeals and the Ohio Supreme Court.
Saleh received his undergraduate degree, summa cum laude, from Baldwin-Wallace College and his J.D. from Case Western Reserve Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Canada-US Law Journal. In 2011, Saleh won the Prosecutor of the Year Award from the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office. And in 2015 he was awarded the Excellence in Management Award for Outstanding Performance in Leadership and Management, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office. He is admitted to the bars of the State of Ohio, the Northern District of Ohio Federal Court and the U.S. Supreme Court.