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By editor Kathy Wray Coleman, who is the most read reporter in Ohio on Google Plus. CLICK HERE TO GO TO GOOGLE PLUS WHERE KATHY WRAY COLEMAN HAS 2.7 MILLION READERS OR VIEWERS UNDER HER NAME AND IS OHIO'S MOST READ REPORTER ON GOOGLE PLUS alone
CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, CLEVELAND, Ohio- A 12-member Cuyahoga County jury, after nearly five weeks of trial before presiding judge Nancy McDonnell, found suspected East Cleveland serial killer Michael Madison (pictured) guilty of multiple counts of murder and several other charges on May 5, setting the stage for a potential death penalty determination.
Some greater Cleveland community activists said Thursday that they are pleased with the outcome.
"We are pleased with the jury decision of guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and we call for Mr. Madison to be punished within the fullest extent of the law," said community activist Kathy Wray Coleman, who leads the grassroots group the Imperial Women Coalition and has led rallies in East Cleveland relative to the Michael Madison murders.
Coleman also called for a moratorium on the murders of Black women in greater Cleveland and for more to be done to seek to eradicate violence against women locally, countywide, statewide, and nationally.
Madison, 38, was charged with various counts, including rape, abuse of a corpse and three counts each of kidnapping and aggravated murder relative to Angela Deskins, 38 and of Cleveland, Shetisha Sheeley, 28, and Shirellda Terry, 18 and also of Cleveland.
He was found guilty on 13 counts, all but the weapons specification charge, and the death penalty phase trial-type hearing begins May 12, a spokesperson for Judge McDonnell told Cleveland Urban News.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper. He and his court appointed attorneys are claiming alleged child abuse as an excuse to escape the death penalty for his selfless murders of his Black female victims.
Madison has said that he does not want to be compared to serial killer and death row inmate Anthony Sowell, who murdered 11 Black women and raped several others at his since demolished home on Imperial Avenue on Cleveland's largely Black east side.
He did not take the stand at trial, though prosecutors played an audiotape of police interrogation of the serial killer where he admitted to killing Sheeley, whom he knew, and Terry, whom he met as she was coming home from a summer tutoring job. He said that he did not remember if he murdered Deskins and, per the audiotape, that his mother's high expectations and his failure to meet them drove him to drink and spoke marijuana, which he sold to make ends meet.
The remains of the three Black women were found wrapped in trash bags in 2013 near the intersection of Shaw and Hayden Avenues in East Cleveland, a largely Black and impoverished suburb of Cleveland.
Deskins and Sheeley were strangled to death, and the remains of Terry were too decomposed to access the extent of the damage, the Cuyahoga County medical examiner said.
Police found the first of the three bodies on July 19, 2013 after a foul smell was reported coming from a garage leased to Madison. The other two remains were discovered a day later, one in the backyard of an abandoned home and the other in the basement of a nearby vacant house.
Deskins was reported missing in June 2013, Sheeley in September 2012, and Terry was last seen leaving her summer job at Carver Elementary School in Cleveland on July 10, 2013.
www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com). Tel: (216) 659-0473 and Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com
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Pictured is 12-year-old Tamir Rice
Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell
