Pictured are Ohio Tenth District Court of Appeals Judge Jennifer Brunner, also a former Ohio secretary of state, Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell, Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, and since fired Cleveland police officer Michael Brelo, Brunner and O'Donnell seeking election in 2020 as Democrats to two seats on the seven-member Ohio Supreme Court, currently of which is majority Republican, with one Black, Democratic justice Melody Stewart (also pictured, and the first Black and first female ever elected the the Ohio Supreme Court)
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper and Black blog.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief
COLUMBUS, Ohio - COLUMBUS, Ohio - Democrats Jennifer Brunner, a state appellate court judge and former Ohio secretary of state, and John O'Donnell, a judge on the general division common pleas bench of Cuyahoga County that sits in Cleveland, will seek election in 2020 to two seats on the Ohio Supreme Court, Brunner running for the seat held by incumbent justice Judith French, 57, who beat O'Donnell in 2014, and O'Donnell set to challenge incumbent justice Sharon Kennedy, 57
Both French and Kennedy, a former police officer, are Republicans, and are two of four women on the court, a majority female court led by Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a Lyndhurst, Ohio native, former lieutenant governor and the first woman chief justice, an elected office in Ohio.
Their six-year terms expire in December 2020 and both are seeking reelection to the bench, French appointed in 2013 by then governor John Kasich to fill Evelyn Lundburg Stratton's unexpired term, and winning a full term in 2014.
The fight for the two seats, the only two up for grabs next year on the Ohio Supreme Court, comes as the 2020 presidential election nears and Republicans in Ohio hold all of the statewide offices, aside from two Ohio Supreme Court seats, including for governor, secretary of state, treasurer, auditor, and Ohio attorney general.
Brunner, 62 and a judge on the 10th District Court of Appeals in Columbus, announced her bid for the state's highest court this week and said she is running in part because the court will likely take up big issues such as criminal justice reform and property rights., and voting rights.
In Cuyahoga County, criminal justice reform is a hot topic, some nine inmates dying in the county jail since last June and the FBI swarming it, coupled with community activists picketing it and demanding they be heard on issues such as excessive sentences and bonds, malicious prosecutions, indictment fixing and grand jury tampering, racism, sexism, and judicial and prosecutorial malfeasance.
Last November U.S. Marshals deemed the mistreatment of inmates in the jail inhumane and unconstitutional.
This week former county jail warden Eric Ivey pleaded to two misdemeanors regarding his inept role relative to the troubled jail where some nine jail affiliates have been indicted to date, including the former jail director and six jail guards, County Executive Armond Budish also under investigation, as well as former sheriff Clifford Pikney, who resigned Aug 2, Pinkney appointed by Budish and the county's first Black sheriff.
Also at issue is the state's redistricting process for congressional seats in 2021, which could reached the Ohio Supreme Court, and likely will, say pundits.
O'Donnell lost to Justice Pat Fisher in 2016 by some 24,000 votes, less than half of a percent and is making his third run for a seat on the state's seven member high court, which is comprised of five Republicans and two Democrats, namely Justice Michael P. Donelly, a former common pleas judges of Cuyahoga County,and Justice Melody Stewart, a former judge of the 8th District Court of Appeals in Cuyahoga County and the first Black and first Black female to be elected to a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court
Prior to Stewart and O'Donnell winning seats on the court in 2018, the court was all White and all Republican.
If both O'Donnell and Brunner were to win next year, it would tilt the court, now with five Republicans and two Democrats, to majority Democratic, with four Democrats and three Republicans.
O'Donnell, 54, took heat from Black elected officials in his own county in 2016, Cleveland Black City Council members, led by Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell, urging voters against his 2016 bid for the court after he acquitted since fired Cleveland cop Michael Brelo of two counts of voluntary manslaughter following a bench trial in May of 2015.
Black leaders later took credit for helping him lose the close race, the closest Ohio Supreme Court race in Ohio history.
The second largest of 88 counties statewide, behind Franklin County, which includes Columbus, the state capital, Cuyahoga County is 29 percent Black, and a Democratic stronghold.
Brelo, who is White, gunned down unarmed Blacks Malissa Williams and Timothy Russell with 49 bullets following a high speed police chase from downtown Cleveland to neighboring East Cleveland in 2012, the former cop jumping onto the hood of Russell's 1979 Malibu Classic and firing 49 bullets through the windshield, the city later settling a wrongful death lawsuit for $3 million, monies split between the two families.
Thirteen non-Black Cleveland cops fired a total of 137 shots at the pair while Russell's car was stationary at the parking lot at Heritage Middle School in East Cleveland where the 22 minute chase ended, including Brelo, who was the only shooting officer prosecuted and the only one fired where it stuck, the case one of Cleveland's most notorious excessive force cases ever.
Two White Cleveland police supervisors were both prosecuted on a single misdemeanor charge of dereliction of duty for allegedly failing to control the chase, one acquitted last month by an all Black East Cleveland jury, and the other awaiting trial.
The cop who initiated the high speed chase claims he mistook Russell's car back firing as a shot at police, Russell, 43, and Williams, 30, both homeless, and struggling with drug abuse.
Whether Cleveland's Black community will rally against O'Donnell relative to his third bid for the Ohio Supreme Court remains to be seen, O'Donnell also under fire for the gross theft of homes of Cuyahoga Court residents via foreclosures initiated by corrupt mortgage companies and banks such as JP-Morgan Chase Bank.
Black and women homeowners who complained were maliciously prosecuted, harassed by O'Donnell in the foreclosure cases, and stalked by cops in select municipalities throughout Cuyahoga County, public records show.
Activists opposed his bid for the court in 2014, and in 2016, in 2014 due in part to his illegal foreclosure theft activity and affiliated harassment of the victims of the documented malfeasance, and in 2016 for that and his Brelo verdict, and associated harassment of Black activists who organized community rallies as to the controversial verdict, some 75 protesters arrested during protests in Cleveland the day of the verdict, most for civil disobedience.
By Kathy Wray Coleman, editor-in-chief at Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's most read digital Black newspaper and Black blog. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. Coleman is an experienced Black political reporter who covered the 2008 presidential election for the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio and the presidential elections in 2012 and 2016 As to the one-on-one interview by Coleman with Obama CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE AT CLEVELAND URBAN NEWS.COM, OHIO'S LEADER IN BLACK DIGITAL NEWS.
