CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM, CLEVELAND, Ohio- Cleveland's Black activists, as part of a larger coalition of largely White suburban activists, picketed the judges of the 34-member largely White Cuyahoga County general division common pleas court on Friday demanding the early release of applicable Ohio prisoners in response to the wave of deaths from the coronavirus in Ohio's 27 prisons that have claimed the lives of more than 73 prisoners and two staffers.

About 50 people attended the event, which was a car rally around the Justice Center where participants tooted their car horns, and a foot rally with speeches on the Justice Center steps by ex-offenders and community activists.

Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Presiding and Administrative Judge Brenda Sheehan issued a press release in response saying early release is a complicated and sometimes lengthy process that requires input from the prosecution and victims of crime, if they so choose, an excuse, say activists, for not effectively dealing with the matter.

Though Black women from the Imperial Women Coalition, a Cleveland activist group, recommended and initiated the rally, Cleveland's often racist mainstream media, including television news channels 5 and 19 and Cleveland.com, promoted Whites and male organizers in their media coverage and subordinated Black women who organized the event too, and who spoke at the rally, a routine thing by such media, some Black activists say.

"Our mainstream media will promote hardened criminals and anybody else they can promote if they are White or male in an effort to undermine Black women," said Women's March Cleveland and Imperial Women Coalition leader Kathy Wray Coleman of Cleveland's mainstream media."This type of sexism, racism and unfair reporting has been going on for sometime and is one of the reasons the Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper and Cleveland.com are nearly bankrupt, we believe, and losing readers in droves."

Coleman said that activist Delores Gray, who is Black, spoke on behalf of the Imperial Women Coalition at the rally Friday and called for the support of women prisoners and that the mainstream media, in cooperation with the White establishment, ignored her.

Instead, the media, vis its coverage of the rally, went out their way to promote the largely White suburban jail coalition that claims to represent the interests of Black people.

Cleveland is a largely Black major American city.

Coleman said that being a White or male activist is a privilege over Black women activists where Cleveland's racist mainstream media is concerned.

Black activists at the rally, led by Black on Black Crime President Alfred Porter Jr., also sought fair play for defendants, a disproportionate number of them Black, and took on three common pleas judges, Judge John O'Donnell, a candidate for the Ohio Supreme Court seeking to unseat Republican Justice Sharon Kennedy in November, Nancy Fuerst, a former and ousted administrative and presiding judge of that court, and controversial judge Daniel Gaul.

O'Donnell is accused of stealing homes via arbitrary foreclosure rulings for big banks and mortgage companies like JPMorgan Chase Bank and is still taking heat for acquitting since fired White Cleveland cop Michael Brelo of manslaughter charges in 2015 following a bench trial, Brelo prosecuted for gunning down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell in 2012 with 137 bullets, 12-other non-Black officers involved in the 137 shots killing not even indicted.

Black county residents who complained of O'Donnell's theft of their homes were met with malicious prosecutions and retaliation from his judicial colleagues and cops out to get them at any costs, activists say.

"That judge [Judge John O'Donnell] considers [former} officer Brelo a hero," said Porter of O'Donnell's acquittal of the former cop.

Fuerst's malfeasance has upset activists too, the judge accused of harassing Blacks and women falsely accused of assault on KKK-type White cops, including denying them indigent counsel, scheduling trials in less than 24 hours without notice and issuing arrest warrants if the fail to appear, refusing to journalize trial dates and then jailing defendants who failed to appear, and denying them their speedy trial rights.

Public records also show that Fuerst is falsifying the case docket to help White prosecutors and the cops at issue and is refusing to journalize or docket when Black defendants targeted with prosecution by prosecutors show for trial and subpoenaed cops do not show, activity, say sources, designed to interfere with defendants' right to a speedy trial.

Porter says Fuerst has a lot of nerve in ordering Black defendants targeted by White cops to trial in less than 24 hours, an effort, he says, to make sure they are stressed out, and unprepared, Fuerst often doing so in retaliation for activist protests on violence against women and for their support of the defendants at issue, and because of local news articles exposing her public corruption and alleged racism.

Nearly suspended from the bench at one time, Gaul has a history of alleged malfeasance and has had murder cases were Blacks are convicted overturned on appeal.

His latest controversy involves a Black woman, Sheila McFarland, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for a 2017 murder conviction, Gaul issuing the sentence after she called him racist in open court

McFarland, whose family members spoke at the rally in support of her, was not even at the scene of the crime where the victim, a drug snitch, was murdered in 2015 at the Indian Hills Senior Living Complex in Euclid, a Cleveland suburb.

Activists also demanded at the rally that the judges address meritorious motions for dismissal on speedy trials grounds of defendants' cases where necessary, home confinement where applicable in lieu of prison and jail, and bond reduction.

Other issues of public concern for the activists are the grand jury indictment process, 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.