Pictured are Cleveland Municipal Court Chief Judge Ronald Adrine (wearing robe), 12-year-old Cleveland police fatal shooting victim Tamir Rice, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty (in pinkish tie), the Rev Dr. Jawanza Colvin, senior pastor at Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland (in gold tie), the Rev Dr. R.A. Vernon, senior pastor of the Word Church in greater Cleveland (in Black shirt) and Julia Shearson, executive director of the Cleveland Chapter of CAIRE-Ohio

By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief, Cleveland Urban News. Com and the Cleveland Urban News.Com Blog, Ohio's Most Read Online Black Newspaper and Newspaper Blog. Tel: 216-659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is a 22-year political, legal and investigative journalist who trained for 17 years, and under five different editors, at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio.

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).

CLEVELAND, Ohio-A three-judge panel of the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals on Friday dismissed the petition seeking a writ of mandamus filed last month by a group of eight greater Cleveland community activists that had asked the court to order Cleveland Municipal Trial Court Judge Ronald Adrine to issue arrest warrants against the two White Cleveland cops involved in the shooting death last year of 12-year-old Tamir Rice.

The judicial panel did not hear the matter and ruled that the proper approach to seek the arrest warrants , or to seek possible appellate redress, is a  direct appeal from Adrine's June 11 order denying the warrants, and not a petition to the court.

In turn, the activists group dubbed the Cleveland 8, which filed the citizens affidavit for criminal charges last month, filed a direct appeal to the eighth district from Adrine's June 11 order, also on Friday, the last day in which to do so within the 30-day time period required by the Ohio Rules of Appellate Procedure for filing an appeal.

Last month Adrine found probable cause for murder and other criminal charges pursuant to the affidavit, which was filed under a state law that citizens rarely used but is used quite frequently by police that seek criminal charges against people, also by affidavit.

But Adrine stopped short of issuing arrest warrants against the two Cleveland cops as the state law for citizens affidavits requires. And that is at the center of the conflict.

Judge Adrine, who now has independent counsel and was initially represented by city law director Barbara Langhenry, argued in his response brief in the appeal  that a complaint that only prosecutors can file is necessary for the arrest warrants per the Ohio Rules of Criminal Procedure,  and Rule 4 supersedes the state law provision for the arrest warrants at issue. And, says Adrine, Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Tim McGinty has the oneness of presenting the case to the county grand jury, the only venue under state law that can actually bring state felony charges against people.

The  2-1 dismissal order by appeals judges Frank D. Celebreeze, the court's administrative judge, and Mary Boyle for Adrine, almost seeks to address the merits unofficially since the appeals court said it lacked jurisdiction to hear the petition as opposed to the appeal. The court said in its 22- page opinion dismissing the petition that a petition for a  writ of mandamus, which in this case sought the court to mandate Adrine to comply with the state law provision to issue arrest warrants on a finding of probable cause from a citizen affidavit,  is an extraordinary remedy by which such burden was not met by the petitioners, or community activists.

Judge Anita Laster Mays, a  newcomer last year to the court, and former Cleveland judge, one that sources say is generally more fair than most, dissented, and sided with the activists. Celebreeze and Boyle are White, and Mays is Black.

The eighth district appeals court is a state appellate court that serves Cuyahoga County, which includes the city of Cleveland and 58 other municipalities, villages or townships.

In dismissing the petition for the writ, which is not an appeal but a direct filing in the court for an order for Adrine to issue arrest warrants, the appeals court did not rule on the merits of the case. It will likely do so now since a timely appeal has been filed.

The Cleveland 8, a multi-cultural group with two preachers, some academicians, and others, led by the prominent Cleveland Black clergy the  Revs Dr. Jawanza Colvin and R.A. Vernon, and Julia Shearson, the executive director of the Cleveland Chapter of CAIR-Ohio, can also appeal the dismissal to the Ohio Supreme Court,  and likely will do so, sources said Friday.

Adrine found evidence for criminal charges in his June 11 ruling on the citizens  affidavit. He found that rookie officer Tim Loehmann who gunned down Rice , a poor Black kid, at a public park on Cleveland's  majority White west side for sporting a toy gun, be charged with murder, involuntary manslaughter, reckless homicide and dereliction of duty, and that Loehmann's  partner, officer Frank Garmback, face charges of reckless homicide and dereliction of duty.

Under state law municipal court judges have authority to hold preliminary hearings for review of felony cases that they can bound over for the grand jury indictment process,  following access to a preliminary hearing and a  finding of probable cause. But  they cannot hear felony trials, and instead hear traffic violations, misdemeanors and small time civil cases.

If McGinty concludes his pending investigation in the case and presents the matter to the grand jury the appeal relative to the arrests warrants issue could become a nullity. But if the activists win on appeal it will force McGinty's hand in terms of requiring that the case be heard by the grand jury.  And win or loose,  McGinty still has the power under state law over felony cases pursued and  prosecuted in Cuyahoga County, Ohio's largest county, and a county with a 29 percent Black population.

In Ohio, county grand jury indictments are required for felonies, but not for misdemeanor charges.

Some community activists that support Rice also want the state law amended to exclude municipal court judges altogether as to felonies. They say that since they cannot hear them and that because only a county grand jury can formally  bring felony charges via an indictment, they should not be issuing preliminary felony charges at the municipal level with arrest warrants and high bonds that disproportionately target Blacks.

"People should not be charged in municipal court for felonies that only a grand jury can issue in a common pleas court and we want the activity to stop, along with these arrest warrants and high bonds that even hurt those that are not later indicted, "said Mary Seawright, a member of the community groups the Fairfax Business Association and the Imperial Women Coalition, and the widow of longtime Cleveland real estate businessman the late William Seawright.

Excluding municipal court judges from the felony charges arena would mean that affidavits, including those filed against people by police, for criminal charges of felonies would be filed in the court of common pleas.

Activists say also that the mainstream media, including the Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, and News Channel 5 in Cleveland,  are likely defaming Blacks with reports of felony charges when no indictments have been issued by a grand jury, usually due to preliminary felony charges brought  by corrupt municipal court judges, mainly White ones, across the county. The clarification that preliminary felony charges are not formal charges by a grand jury is usually not made by greater Cleveland mainstream media, research reveals, when Blacks are charged, but is done with police, and in particular relative to the two cops involved in the Rice killing that were charged by Adrine in Cleveland.

(www.clevelandurbannews.com) / (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com).