Pictured are former U.S. president Donald Trump and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief. Coleman trained for 17 years as a reporter with the Call and Post Newspaper and is an investigative and political reporter with a background in legal and scientific reporting. She is also a former 15-year public school biology teacher.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest, and the most read independent digital news sites in Ohio. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-Washington, D.C.- The U.S. Senate on Saturday voted 57-43 to acquit former president Donald Trump of a single impeachment article of incitement of insurrection following an impeachment trial that centered on whether he provoked the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that left five dead, including a Capitol police officer.

While impeachment occurs in the House of Representatives, the Senate has sole authority to convict or acquit following a  trial on the impeachment.

Trump said in a statement after his acquittal that the proceedings were bogus at best.

“It is a sad commentary on our times that one political party in America is given a free pass to denigrate the rule of law, defame law enforcement, cheer mobs, excuse rioters, and transform justice into a tool of political vengeance, and persecute, blacklist, cancel and suppress all people and viewpoints with whom or which they disagree," said Trump.

After taking control of the Senate via last November's election, the Democrats now control the Senate, the House of Representatives and the White House but could not muster up the two-thirds majority needed to convict the former president, which would have had no criminal implications but could have served to bar him from holding office again

They did get a simple majority, a party line vote.

The Democrats needed 17 Republicans for a conviction but got only seven pro-conviction votes from GOP senators.

Sen Rob Portman, a Cincinnati Republican, voted not guilty, saying Trump's status as a former president precludes a conviction and Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat and the other U.S. senator from Ohio, voted guilty.

Brown said leading up to the impeachment trial that the proceedings were not about vengeance but about holding the former president accountable.

He said it was important "to do the  trial and find him [Trump] guilty of inciting these riots."

A conviction, however, did not materialize for the Democrats, whose hardline was that Trump lied about a fixed election and then cultivated the Capitol riot out of spite because he lost fair and square.

It was the second impeachment trial for Trump and a second acquittal for Trump, 74, a Republican and one term president ousted in last November's election by current president Joe Biden, a Democrat who was vice president under former Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president.

The five-day trial that began on Feb, 9 did not draw the expected excitement and was overshadowed by a still raging coronavirus pandemic that has left millions dead across the country and worldwide.

Congressional impeachment managers put on their case first as an array of Democratic congresspersons showed video of the deadly Capitol riot and gave commentary

Protesters, whom Trump egged on during a fiery speech before the deadly siege on the Capitol, say the presidential election, in which Biden won both the electoral college and popular vote over Trump, was tainted, and stolen from the former president.

More than 200 people have been criminally charged relative to the Jan. 6 insurrection.

A real estate mogul and former television personality who upset Democrat Hillary Clinton to win the White House in 2016, Trump did not testify as his lawyer's defense on his behalf was that the constitution does not allow an impeachment conviction against a former president who has left office and that Trump's inciteful speech leading up to the riot was constitutionally protected speech.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who voted guilty,  and former majority leader Mitch McConnell, who voted not guilty,  blasted Trump in speeches after his acquittal, among others.

Schumer said that regardless of Saturday's acquittal, the day will go down in American history as "a day of infamy."

McConnell took the same line as fellow Congressional Republicans who voted against impeachment, saying  former presidents cannot be impeached.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that had McConell, who lost his party position as House Minority Leader to Schumer after the Democrats regained control of the Senate last year, set a timely impeachment trial last year after the House impeached Trump, she believes the outcome would have been different and that Trump would have been convicted by the Senate.

President Biden has essentially remained mum on the impeachment issue, focusing instead on taming the coronavirus.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and blog in Ohio and in the Midwest, and the most read independent digital news sites in Ohio. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview. CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor in chief. Coleman trained for 17 years as a reporter with the Call and Post Newspaper and is an investigative and political reporter with a background in legal and scientific reporting. She is also a former 15-year public school biology teacher.

Pictured is Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog. Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, and who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio. We interviewed former president Barack Obama one-on-one when he was campaigning for president. As to the Obama interview, CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS

The 11 women were strangled and murdered by serial killer Sowell at his since demolished home on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland's Mount Pleasant Neighborhood on the city's largely Black east side.

And while three other women were raped and escaped, they were left with emotional scars.

Activists will remember the 11 fallen women and other women subjected to heinous violence at Thursday's public event on Imperial Avenue and will give speeches.

"We are pleased that Anthony Sowell and his attorneys can no longer file frivolous appeals of his convictions on 82 of 83 counts counts  and that the families of Sowell's victims have gotten some degree of closure but so much more work is needed to protect  Black women in Cleveland from these heinous types of crimes and violence in general," said Imperial Women Coalition founder and Cleveland activist and organizer Kathy Wray Coleman, who has been the head organizer of nearly every anniversary rally and march relative to the Imperial Avenue Murders since 2010, including the anniversary rally held last October.

"Men will be at Thursday's rally in support of Black women on this issue as we have always done," said Black on Black Crime President Alfred Porter Jr.  "Sowell and his attorneys can no longer misuse the system."

Other participating groups for the upcoming rally include the Cleveland Peacemakers, the Black Man's Army, Black Women's PAC of Greater Cleveland, the Brickhouse Wellness Center, International Women's Day March Cleveland, Find Our Children The Missing-Ebony Alert, Survivors and Victims of Tragedy, the Laura Cowan Foundation, Refusefacism Ohio, the Carl Stokes Brigade and Women's March Cleveland.

Dubbed the "Cleveland strangler," Sowell was convicted in 2011 by a Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas jury on 82 of 83 counts, including 11 counts of aggravated murder and three counts of rape.

Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose, the trial court judge who presided over Sowell's criminal case and a former Cleveland Browns football player, handed the serial killer a death sentence following  a recommendation from the same jury that convicted him.

Six of the 11 murdered women were killed by Sowell after Cleveland police released him from custody in 2008 on a rape complaint, the serial killer arrested again in 2009 on another rape complaint that stuck, but only after he murdered six more women.

Police also ignored missing persons reports filed by family members of the victims, allegedly because the victims were poor Black women.

Sowell and his lawyers exhausted all appeals that sought to overturn his convictions and death sentence, including to the U.S. Supreme court, which refused to hear his case in 2017.

The city settled with the families of the six women murdered after Sowell was  released from custody in 2008 in spite of a pending rape report to police.

The settlement was for $1 million, which was split between the six families.

Sowell was arrested again in 2009 on a rape complaint and that is when the 11 bodies were discovered at his then home on Imperial Avenue.

Five other families that sued await settlement.

A former U.S. marine, Sowell served 15 years in prison for attempted rape prior to the Imperial Avenue Murders.