CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio- Blacks accused of crimes by White Cleveland cops and the city of Cleveland, such as a misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest, are being denied indigent counsel in the courtroom of Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Charles Patton, a former Cleveland councilman who is Black and, according to public records, is then allegedly harassing the Black defendants, especially those that have complained about him via the filing of an affidavit of prejudice with Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor to seek his disqualification from hearing the cases. (Editor's note: Judge Patton has been handpicked by chief and retiring judge Ron Adrine to preside over the cases after Black female judges Pinkey Carr, Lauren Moore and Michelle Earley recused themselves, Patton the handpicked henchman to represent the interest of the city of Cleveland in the cases, with corrupt cops and unethical city prosecutors that are trampling upon the defendants' legal rights also at his disposal).

Greater Cleveland community activists are in the process of planning a peaceful picket against Patton as to his alleged malfeasance, and relative to the ongoing mistreatment of Blacks and others across racial lines in the municipal and common pleas courts of Cuyahoga County, activists saying that the high-tech lynching of the Black community and other disenfranchised groups by a legal system in dire need of repair must cease.

"I'm tired and offended and feel that it is time to picket judges who continually harass Black people and Judge Patton has a history of this type of egregious behavior," said Alfred Porter Jr., president of the Cleveland-based grassroots group Black on Black Crime Inc.

Porter said the picket will likely occur the second week in October at the Justice Center in Cleveland where Patton's courtroom is located.

Also in the cases at issue, the speedy trial time has expired, public records show, requiring dismissal of the cases, which has allegedly angered the sometimes incoherent Patton, escalating his harassment of the Black defendants, sources said.

O'Connor has the authority under state law to disqualify Patton and other Ohio judges from hearing cases for prejudice or a conflict of interest, including other municipal judges, and common pleas and appellate judges, this by granting an affidavit of prejudice, which must be filed and sworn to by a party to a case in an inferior court, or by his or her attorney of record, at least seven days before the next hearing before the judge in question.

The 13-member Cleveland Municipal Court is a largely Black court and its judges hear traffic and misdemeanor cases, and civil cases with damages sought below $15,000.

And the judges, like other municipal court judges in Ohio, hold preliminary hearings in felony cases brought initially in their courts, cases that may or may not be subsequently bound over to the common pleas court for possible indictments, or dismissed at the municipal court level..

They do not, however, have jurisdiction to hear felony cases.

On any given Monday, practically all you see are Black defendants in the Cleveland Municipal Court, Cleveland of which is about 58 percent Black.

And bondsmen are getting rich off of the Black community with help from Patton, and several other judges, and via illegal and exorbitant bonds, due process and fair play be dammed.

At least one of the indigent Black defendants told ClevelandUrbanNews.Com and KathyWrayColemanOnlineNewsBlog.Com that she does not feel safe appearing alone and without an attorney in court before the harassing Judge Patton and has watched him mistreat Black defendants that come before him, including angrily throwing one in jail for 30 days for questioning the time period for paying a fine and court cost.

Court records reveal that Patton, a Democrat on the municipal court bench since 2006, is on a row in retaliating against those that complain about his courtroom tactics, such as demeaning poor Black people who cannot pay the high court costs and fines, and issuing illegal capius warrants and exorbitant bonds of $15,000 against Blacks that miss a pretrial even after their attorneys appear before him on their behalf after telling their clients they are not on certain occasions required to attend pretrials. And this occurs even if the judge has not summoned them to appear, the activity of which sources say is unconstitutional and a possible violation of the Ohio Lawyer's Professional Code of Conduct and the Ohio Judicial Code of Conduct, among other authorities. (Editor's note: When attorneys appear for pretrials on behalf of the Black defendants that are lucky enough to have representation and in their client's absence at times as lawyers for White defendants frequently do, Patton and the clerk's office refuse to document such on the public case docket to suggest that neither the defendant nor his or her counsel appeared. Then he will issue a capius warrant and exorbitant bond against the Black defendant if Cleveland big wigs and city prosecutors and police urge him to do so, say sources, and in vivid retaliation for affidavits of prejudice filed against him with the Ohio Supreme Court).

Some of the retaliation, say sources, is political in an election year for Cleveland mayor and Cleveland City Council, and the Black defendants at issue are often targets of public corruption by elected officials of Cleveland, police, and others for speaking out on issues of public concern from police murders of Black people to racism, sexism and housing discrimination against the Black community.

White defendants accused of crimes that appear before Judge Patton are not treated in a similar fashion, their high-paid attorneys often appearing on their behalf before Patton in their absence, and with ease and no harassment of their clients by the runaway judge.

A ClevelandUrbanNews.Com and the KathyWrayColemanOnlineNewsBlog.Com investigation also reveal that in at least one of those cases of Judge Patton's documented and unprecedented harassment of his own Black people,  cases which are not specially mentioned herein to protected the identities of the harassed Black defendants  due to documented retaliation against them, he is falsifying the case docket with operatives of the Cleveland Clerks of Court office to remove arbitrary pretrial orders from the records, orders issued while an affidavit of prejudice was pending against him in the Ohio Supreme Court. ( Editor's note: In at least one instance a representative of Cleveland municipal Court Clerk of Court Earle B Turner was forced to revise a case docket manipulation by an office employee to remove a pretrial order by Judge Patton, an illegal order for the Black defendant to appear before him while an affidavit of prejudice filed against him was pending in the Ohio Supreme Court).

Ohio Revised Codes (Ohio state law) 2701.031 allows for the disqualification of municipal court judges in Ohio from cases for bias or a conflict of interest in conjunction with the granting of an affidavit of prejudice by Chief Justice O'Connor, and once the clerk of the Ohio Supreme court accepts the affidavit for filing, the judge complained of cannot take substantive actions such as court orders for the parties to the case, including defendants in criminal proceedings, to appear before him or her while the investigation is pending.

Judges that have done so have frequently been subsequently suspended by the state's high court, if the victim of the harassment filed a complaint with the bar.

"The judge [Cleveland Judge Charles Patton] should not be issuing pretrial orders while he is under investigation," an Ohio Supreme Court clerk employee told ClevelandUrbanNews.Com and the KathyWrayColemanOnlineNewsBlog.Com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper and Black blog.

Per an amendment in 2009 by the Ohio lawmakers of the aforementioned disqualification of a municipal court judge in Ohio, the chief judge of Ohio common pleas courts had authority to decide the granting of denying of an affidavit of disqualification of the municipal judge, that authority of which now rest with Chief Justice O'Connor at the Ohio Supreme Court level.

O'Connor is a powerful and popular Republican, and a former Lieut. governor.

Hence, O'Connor now decides such affidavits and not Cuyahoga County Administrative and Presiding Judge John Russo, the chief judge of the 34-member largely White general division court, who, before the change in the state law, decided affidavits of prejudice filed against municipal court judges in Cuyahoga County in Ohio, authority of which he seemingly abused, often denying such affidavits regardless of the merits, and no matter the severity of the prejudice by the judge against the complaining party.