Pictured are Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Nancy Fuerst, whom activists want voted out of office for alleged malfeasance and the harassment of maliciously prosecuted Black activists, and Cuyahoga County Sheriff Clifford Pinkney, the county's first Black sheriff who announced Friday that he will officially resign Aug 2.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, investigative reporter, editor-in-chief
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com-CLEVELAND, Ohio-A day after more than 10 groups of community activists converged on the embattled Cuyahoga County Jail at the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland to protest jail conditions and nine inmate deaths in roughly a year, county sheriff Clifford Pinkney, the county's first Black sheriff, has resigned.
A 29-year veteran with the sheriff's department, Pinkney was promoted from chief to sheriff in 2015, replacing ousted sheriff Frank Bova.
He resigned from his $125,000-a-year job Friday and said through a spokesperson that it is for "personal reasons."
County spokeswoman Mary Louise Madigan confirmed to reporters that Pinkney has tendered his resignation.
His last day on the job is Aug. 2 and whether he will take leave or continue on into the late summer is unclear.
About 100 people participated in Thursday's protest at the Justice Center, an energetic demonstration led by activist Carol Steiner of Puncture the Silence Cleveland, Yvonka Hall of the Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition and the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus, and members of the Ohio Student Association, Black on Black Crime Inc, and Imperial Women Coalition.
"We support Cleveland Judge Michael Nelson's call for a federal takeover of this jail and a consent decree for jail reforms like they have with the Cleveland police department [and the U.S.Department of Justice]." said activist Alfred Porter Jr. at that rally where protesters and former inmates demanded jail reforms and took on county officials, jail administrators, judges and County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley.
Also at that rally activists denounced high bonds, excessive sentences, malicious prosecutions, mass incarceration, and inhumane jail conditions, one former inmate, a heroin addict, speaking and saying she wanted to die while an inmate in the jail due to its atrocious conditions.
Activists at the rally urged voters to oust Common Pleas Judge Nancy Fuerst, a former presiding and administrative judge of the 34-member largely White common pleas bench of Cuyahoga County, when she runs for reelection in 2020.
Fuerst is under fire by activists and others for allegedly harassing Black activists via racist and malicious prosecutions at the hands of prosecutors and White cops who have allegedly stalked them for standing up.against excessive force by Cleveland police, public corruption and the theft of homes of county residents via illegal foreclosures led by crooked Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell, the sheriff's office, and big banks and mortgage companies, including JP-Morgan Chase Bank and its foreclosure law firms of Bricker and Eckler, Thompson Hine, and Lerner, Sampson and Rothfuss.
Protesters held protest signs at the rally calling for Fuerst's ouster, saying she has it in for Black activists who have fought for court-monitored jail reforms and against racism, sexism, police misconduct and excessive force, and county public corruption by her judicial peers, and others.
Activists said Fuerst has refused to dismiss malicious cases involving Black activists falsely accused of assaulting but not touching White KKK-type University Heights cops, even though the speedy trial time has passed, and that she is arbitrarily jailing them for missing trials with out formal notice of trial or trial dates put in writing, journalized or docketed as required by Ohio Supreme Court case law. She is also refusing to journalize or docket when they appear for trials and the cops do not show and is issuing orders, data show, saying she will jail indigent Black activists in cases before her if they insult or take up too much time of White attorneys she handpicks and appoints to felony cases.
Her reason, says sources, for refusing to journalize or docket trial dates, is so if police fail to respond to subpoenas in malicious prosecution cases involving Black activists she can justify not penalizing them or not holding them in contempt of court. Speedy trial rights, unless waived, are also at issue when cops as purported witnesses fail to show for trial. All of this, say activists, and legal pundits, seems unethical, and commensurate to obstruction of justice, and is enough of an incentive to merit the judge's resignation from the bench.
And the judge's purported malfeasance, backed up by public records, is supported by unethical White criminal defense attorneys she appoints to indigent cases such as Brian McGraw, who, public records show, is misrepresenting his indigent clients for cops and prosecutors and helps Judge Fuerst and prosecutors get erroneous plea deals against them beyond the constitutionally mandated speedy trial time, and in the absence of required preliminary hearings.
Sheriff Pinkney's departure follows indictments this year of some five jail guards, one for allegedly contributing to an inmate's death, as well as former jail director Ken Mills and former warden Eric Ivey, who is Black and was demoted to associate warden shortly before he was indicted in April.
Mills' replacement is Ronda Gibson, a Lorain County Jail administrator and Cuyahoga County's new jail director who will officially start work June 3.
Appointed rather than elected due to a voter-adopted change in county governance implemented in 2011 that replaced three county commissioners and the county elected offices, all but the still-elected judges and county prosecutor, with a county executive and 11-member county council, Pinkney, as sheriff, reports to County Executive Armond Budish.
And Budish, who ousted former sheriff Bova but seemed to protect Pinkney, who was also shielded from the scrutiny partly with help from Black leaders, is in hot water too, and after the FBI and other authorities raided his office twice this year, even confiscating his cell phone.
That FBI's raid on the county executive, a Democrat in a county where the Dems are a stronghold, was multi-faceted, sources say, with authorities searching for evidence relative to an ongoing county public corruption probe, and wanting answers as to why Budish and jail administrators allegedly ignored the inmate deaths until gaining the spotlight, the county jail now in the news as one of the nation's most notorious jail's.
Budish is fighting back as the probe broadens, an extensive probe that has seen two former common pleas judges, former county commissioner Jimmy Dimora , and former county auditor Frank Russo imprisoned, among others, Russo and Dimora among some 65 county affiliates, mainly Democratic businessmen, who have either been convicted, or have pleaded guilty to public corruption related crimes in the last decade. .
The county executive, a former speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives and a trained lawyer, does have friends in high places and has hired as his attorney to fight the FEDS, Steve Dettelbach, a fellow Democrat and former district attorney for the Northern District of Ohio in Cleveland who lost a close election for Ohio attorney general last year to Dave Yost, a Republican who succeeded Mike DeWine into office, DeWine also a Republican, and a former U.S. senator.
The Cuyahoga County Jail is the state's second most populated jail behind Franklin County, the largest of 88 counties statewide, followed by Cuyahoga County, which includes the majority Black Cleveland and is roughly 29 percent Black.
A damning report released last November by U.S. Marshals on county jail conditions generated local and national news, a dreadful look at how inmates are mistreated such as withholding food for punishment, jailing juveniles with adults, rat and roach infested jail facilities, and a paramilitary jail corrections officers unit dubbed "The Men in Black" that intimidates and harasses inmates.
The FBI and other authorities have been swarming the jail since last year after inmates began popping up dead. .
The Cleveland jail merged with the county last year and the jail, now one jail run solely by the county, is overcrowded with inmates stacked on top of each other, an ongoing investigation by Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com reveals.
Cleveland community activists picketed in front of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center last summer over judicial and prosecutorial malfeasance, police misconduct, and the overcrowding of the county jail.
Activists have been picketing regularly over jail conditions, even in front of Budish' gated home in affluent Beachwood, where they called for his resignation, and at county administrative headquarters in downtown Cleveland before county council meetings.
Inhumane and unconstitutional jail conditions are at the heart of the investigation by federal officials, prompting an impending lawsuit seeking a court injunction and a federal takeover of the jail.
Pregnant women are jailed on the floor, and health care is inadequate, investigators found.
This is coupled with malicious prosecutions, excessive bonds and heightened criminal sentences that disproportionately target the Black community, Black men in particular, the ongoing investigation by .Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com found.
Indictment fixing by prosecutors, judges and the office of the county clerk of courts is routine, public records reveal, and in the absence of a county grand jury. And this indictment fixing, usually against Blacks falsely accused of assaulting White cops where the counts of criminal charges by a county grand jury are arbitrarily doubled, has been covered up by some common pleas judges, including Judge Fuerst, and the four judges Russo, namely Judges Joe, Michael, Nancy Margaret, and John Russo, the administrative and presiding judge.
Data further show that Blacks in particular, and others, are often jailed illegally, sometimes to appease the prosecution, other times for political favors, and generally to perpetrate a money enterprise that centers around resources the county gets for jailing people.
Those fiscal jail resources, which further greed and public corruption, investigators have said, include a per diem rate to the county for each inmate, a jail shopping store that delivers food and other goods weekly to inmates, and expensive phone calls simply for inmates to talk locally to family members, and sometimes even to their own lawyers.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog with some 5 million views on Google Plus alone.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.
