CLEVELAND, Ohio - Former Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas judge Lance Mason, also a former Ohio senator who stabbed ex- wife Aisha Fraser to death last year with two kitchen knives in the driveway of a  home she owned in Shaker Heights, was sentenced Thursday after withdrawing a former not guilty plea and pleading guilty to aggravated murder and several other charges.

Fraser had come to drop off one of their two young daughters the day Mason went off, and he was under a protective order at the time and living in his ex-wife's home with his adult sister, who called 9-1-1 after one of the children, the eight-year-old, ran inside the home from the car to alert her aunt of her father's stabbing of their mother.

Stark County visiting judge John Haas, who presided after all of Mason's former judicial colleagues on the common pleas bench either recused themselves or refused the case,  sentenced Mason, who turned 52 last month, to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 35 years, meaning that the former judge cannot even be considered for release from prison until he is at least 87 years old.

Mason spoke at sentencing and said he was upset that his ex-wife had men around his daughters without him being there too, and he said he knew he had let his daughters down by killing their mother.

The disgraced former judge who served time in prison for felonious assault on Fraser had been charged in the current case via a multi-count indictment with murder, aggravated murder, felonious assault, theft, stalking and violating a protective order and consent agreement.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley did not seek the death penalty, O'Malley a Democrat like Mason and a former Parma Safety director and former chief deputy under former count prosecutor Bill Mason, Bill Mason now chief of staff to County Executive Armond Budish.

Upset over the gruesome killing, O'Malley told reporters yesterday that Lance Mason, who is no relation to Bill Mason, is "a sick individual."

His office sought the maximum sentence of life without parole, plus an additional 15 1/2 years, but to no avail, the visiting judge opting for a lesser sentence.

The former judge's bond, which he has no use for since getting sentenced, was set at $5 million.

Declared indigent he is represented by appointed attorneys Tom Shaughnessy and Kevin Spellacy in the celebrated case that has made national news, Mason a Cleveland City Hall minority businesses administrator when he stabbed Fraser to death on Nov 17, 2018 without any mercy whatsoever.

Lance Mason is by all means violent, more evidence that White collar Black men beat and kill their wives and ex-wives too.

He served nine months of a two- year prison sentence following convictions on felonious assault and domestic violence involving Fraser in 2015, and remained angry, sources said.

The unprecedented murder is steeped in political controversy, Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, the city's third Black mayor, taking heat for hiring Mason as a minority  services administrator after he left prison, Mason, also a former attorney with the Baker, Hostetler law firm, stepping into a decent paying city job after prison over some 300 other applicants, the mayor saying he believes in second chances.

Congresswoman Marcia Fudge, who is also Black, faced deeper scrutiny for recommending Mason for the City Hall position via a flowery recommendation letter made public in local and national media reports after Fraser's brutal murder and when Fudge last year toyed with opposing Rep Nancy Pelosi for House speaker, Fudge later saying in response that Mason had been a friend and needed to support his family after prison.

She said she no longer supports him.

At sentencing Thursday the array of Black leaders who had helped him nab the city job after he returned home from prison were conspicuously absent, absolutely no one speaking on his behalf other than his attorneys.

Fraser, 45 at the time of her death, was also Black, and was a sixth grade teacher at Woodbury Elementary School in Shaker Heights.

A fellow Shaker Heights teacher spoke in support of Fraser at sentencing as did her family members, including an uncle who asked the judge to throw the book at Mason.

Fraser took back her maiden name after divorcing the abusive Mason after the assault.

After he stabbed Fraser to death in the driveway, he then stole her car and hit a Shaker Heights police cruiser trying to get away, the former judge later charged with felonious assault on the officer in that cruiser.

Neighbors were well aware of the domestic violence in the Mason home in Shaker Heights before Fraser escaped the abusive judge's wrath and sought refuge through divorce  because it was the talk of the community, sources said.

Before he was ousted as a judge and stripped of his law licence over the felony assault conviction, Mason was the only Black male judge among three of them on the 34-member Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas general division bench, the court led by Presiding and Administrative Judge John Russo who has said that this is his final year as chief judge.

The largely female common pleas bench now has four Black judges, all of them women, judges Shirley Strickland Saffold, Deborah Turner, Cassandra-Collier Williams, and Wanda Jones, the largest number of Blacks ever on that court, which hears felonies, civil lawsuits with damages sought in excess of $15,000, administrative appeals, and a host of other legal matters.

Mason was arrested on Aug. 3, 2014 in Shaker Heights following the physical altercation at Van Aken Boulevard near Glencairn Road that brought him the assault conviction in 2015, Fraser, his then wife and their two kids as passengers in the car he was driving,

Court documents state that Mason hit his then wife Aisha in the face with his fist, bit her, and allegedly slammed her head against the dashboard of the car.

A 9-1-1 tape reveals that Aisha, who was transported to the hospital and later released, told the dispatcher that Mason beat her, threw her from the car, and then drove off with their two young children.

Fraser filed for divorce on Aug. 4, 2014, a day after the 2014 assault incident.

Her divorce petition cites, among other claims, extreme cruelty and gross neglect of duty.

Shaker Heights is a largely White middle and upper middle class Cleveland suburb, one of the most affluent communities in the county, and nationwide in some sectors of the city.

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.