Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog, both also top in Black digital news in the Midwest.Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, CLEVELAND, Ohio- Cleveland's Black activists, as part of a larger coalition, will picket to alert judges of the 34-member largely White Cuyahoga County general division common pleas court and municipal court judges countywide on Friday May 29 from 12 pm-2 pm at the Cuyahoga County Justice Center in downtown Cleveland in response to numerous issues, and mainly a wave of deaths from the coronavirus in Ohio's 27 prisons that have claimed the lives of more than 73 prisoners and two staffers.
The activists say the judges need to wake up and do their jobs, including hearing motions for early release during a pandemic, and that they should fight with activists and prison reform advocates to save Ohio prisoners from dying from a virus that is sweeping Ohio prisons in rare form.
The protest is both a car rally, where people in cars will meet at 12:30 pm on May 29 at at the staging location at 5340 Hamilton and will caravan from the staging location to the Justice Center where they will remain in other cars and circle the block at 1pm, and a foot rally where those on foot shall meet at the Justice Center at 1 pm for a rally where activists will march along side of the cars around the Justice Center and nearby so that their voices are heard.
There will also be speeches at 1:30 pm on the steps of the Justice Center on Lakeside Ave. that will include former prisoners, family members of current Ohio prisoners, and leaders of Black-led Cleveland groups since the virus has infected and killed Blacks nationwide and in Ohio at a rate more than double that of Whites.
Social distancing is encouraged, organizers said, but free speech governs.
Imperial Women Coalition and Black on Black Crime, Black area Cleveland activist groups, will join the Coalition to Stop the Humanity in the Cuyahoga County Jail, a coalition of more that 15 activist groups, for the long overdue protest against the judges.
The deadly virus, COVID-19, has killed some 5 million people worldwide and more than 1.6 million nationally, some 1,720 of them in Ohio, which has reported 30,819 total confirmed cases from the pandemic to date.
Activists want the judges to address motions for early prison release and a host of other legal matters, including meritorious motions for dismissal on speedy trial grounds of applicable defendants' cases, home confinement in lieu of prison and jail where necessary, bond reduction, denial of indigent counsel, excessive sentences, malicious prosecutions, and the fact that a disproportionate number of the nearly 50,000 prisoners in Ohio's state prisons where the coronavirus is running rampant are Black.
And while the Cuyahoga County Jail in Cleveland that U.S. Marshals in November 2018 deemed unconstitutional and inhumane in a now infamous report has reduced its inmate population from some 2,500 inmates to less than 1,000 since the coronavirus outbreak that began in March, more needs to be done relative to a jail where nine inmates have died in less than two years.
It too is plagued with the coronavirus.
The 29 percent Black county is the second largest of Ohio's 88 counties and it includes Cleveland.
"What the judges are doing to prisoners in Ohio during this pandemic just furthers what we have been saying about them all along," said activist and Black on Black Crime President Alfred Porter Jr. "They do not care about administering justice fairly and they are a problem to the Black community, which is getting hurt the most by this."
Activist Kathy Wray Coleman, who leads Imperial Women Coalition and is a key organizer of Women's March Cleveland and International Women's Day March Cleveland, said that "we want women released from these prisons where the virus is rampant and they remain unprotected, as well as a comprehensive investigation by authorities of what is going on in our courts, jails and prisons during a pandemic that is disproportionately impacting the Black community, Black women and Blacks caught up in our racist, sexist and unconstitutional legal system."
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine was sued last Friday by a group of Ohio prisoners who want the immediate release of thousands of prisoners threatened by the outbreak of the coronavirus, a pandemic that has claimed millions of lives worldwide, some 1,600 of them in Ohio alone.
Filed in the U.S. District Court in Columbus, the suit accuses DeWine and the state’s prison director, Annette Chambers-Smith, both defendants in the lawsuit, of violating prisoners constitutional rights by failing to to control or prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus, and of having a negligent disregard for the welfare and safety of prisoners during a pandemic.
A disproportionate number of inmates that have died in state prisons in Ohio of the coronavirus, and those who have nationally lost their lives in the custody of their respective states, are Black.
The lawsuit, which seeks class action status and the release of more than 15,000 prison inmates, comes as common pleas judges in Cuyahoga County and throughout Ohio are purportedly ignoring motions for the early release of prisoners.
The judges, who are not defendants in the lawsuit, say the courts are partially closed and that they have limited case dockets. Hence, some matters, like hearing early release motions, are often getting put on the back-burner, criminal defense attorneys argue.
Some 12 inmates and one correction officer have died from the virus in the Marion Correctional Institution that houses a lot of defendants that come from Cuyahoga County since the virus broke-out two months ago.
In addition to the release of thousands of inmates with medical conditions serving time on low-level felonies, attorneys representing the plaintiffs named in the suit have requested that the court order the governor and state prison officials to release low-security risk inmates and those who have served the majority of their sentences.
Some inmates should be given home confinement for the remainder of their sentences, the suit says.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog, both also top in disgital news in the Midwest. 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.
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