Pictured is Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr

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By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, via a journal entry issued on Wednesday, denied an affidavit of prejudice filed by Chief Cuyahoga County Public Defender Mark Stanton on behalf of his clients to permanently suspend Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr from hearing any and all criminal and traffic cases for holding court during the coronavirus outbreak but did rule that Carr cannot hold court during the outbreak as ordered by Cleveland Administrative and Presiding Judge Michelle Earley, who is Black like Carr.

The state law or statute (R.C. 2701.031) for disqualifying a municipal court judge in Ohio from hearing cases for bias or conflict, however, does not say the chief justice of the Ohio Supreme court can order such judge off of a group of cases rather than individual cases, and  in lieu of a bar complaint.

Via her ruling on Wednesday, O'Connor, who under state law decides all affidavits of prejudice filed against Ohio judges, obviously made that clear and denied the blanket demand by the county public defender's office that Carr be barred from hearing cases in general as lacking merit.

In short, the chief justice found no prejudice by Carr but said the judge sent mixed messages and caused confusion when she held court against Earley's order to delay hearings on non-jailed defendants.

Though really just a peer to the other judges by law and other authorities, Earley issued an order for the judges of the Cleveland Municipal Court, 13 of them and most of them Black, to postpone hearing cases of defendants not in jail for three weeks because of the coronavirus outbreak, an order that does not apply to jailed defendants.

Carr, and some other judges, went forward with court anyway, the clerk's office issuing arrests warrants if defendants, most of them Black, failed to appear.

Those warrants have since been recalled.

Carr said she did not sign any journal entries for such warrants but noted on documents that they "failed to appear," the Ohio Supreme Court, per relevant case law, requiring that judges journalize such things as arrest warrants in writing in order for them to be effective

An appeal of Carr's order for defendants to appear in court during the coronavirus outbreak filed by County Public Defender Stanton is also pending in the 8th District Court of Appeals, though it is questionable whether it has jurisdiction to hear an appeal at this juncture and while the criminal and traffic cases at issue are still pending before Carr.

Moreover, even if the 8th district accepts the appeal as a final appealable order and hears the case, it could likely  rule that the issue is now moot.

A Republican and the first female elected to the state's high court, O'Connor, a native of Lyndhurst in Cuyahoga County and a former lieutenant governor, had ordered Carr to temporarily stop hearing cases during the coronavirus outbreak util she could rule on the affidavit, the chief justice bringing some degree of clarity to uncharted territory and in essence handing more authority to administrative judges in municipal and county courts in Ohio in a magnified crisis like the coronavirus outbreak, though her ruling pertains to the affidavit of disqualification at bar.

Judge Carr quickly drew the ire of Cleveland's mainstream media, which is routine when complaints are leveled against Black judges by  prominent White men, this time Chief Cuyahoga County Public Defender Mark Stanton, and criminal defense attorney Ian Friedman, head of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association.

Judge Carr is a former city law director and assistant county prosecutor-turned judge and was the lead prosecutor who got serial killer Anthony Sowell convicted on 82 of 83 counts in 2011. Sowell murdered 11 Black women and raped three others at his since demolished home on Imperial Avenue on Cleveland's largely Black east side He sits on death row He and his attorneys are seeking a new appeal in the 8th District Court of Appeals. We do, however, call for Judge Carr to alter her temperament toward defense counsel and defendants and we urge defense counsel and the Cleveland bar to fight against the denial of speedy trial rights for Blacks and some others in municipal and the general division common pleas court of Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland.