Pictured are Nate Gray (wearing shirt and no tie), former Cleveland mayor Michael R. White (wearing suspenders), and former East Cleveland mayor Emmanuel Onunwor (wearing gold tie)

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By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief

CLEVELANDURBANNEWS.COM-CLEVELAND, Ohio-U.S. District Judge James Gwin has denied a request by an attorney for former Cleveland mayor Michael R. White friend Nate Gray to be fully released from prison, Gray actually leaving a federal prison in June but technically remaining in custody via a GPS monitor and home confinement, both part of the re-entry program for the 61-year-old whom the judge handed a 15-year- prison sentence in 2005 for bribing public officials and a host of other corruption-related convictions.

Attorney Andrea Whitaker had asked the judge to grant full release saying Gray was a stellar prisoner and had heart and back problems, Gwin ruling that such claims do not merit early release.

Gray is set to be released fully from prison in February, 15 years after he was sentenced.

Black leaders have mixed views on Gray's 15-year sentence, some saying it was excessive because he is a Black man, and others saying he is a convicted criminal who got what he deserved.

A businessman and former confidant of White, who is Black like Gray and a three-term former mayor who chose not to seek reelection in 2001 and now lives on an Alpaca farm in rural Ohio with his wife, Gray was convicted by a jury on 37 charges, including bribing public officials in Cleveland, East Cleveland and Houston, an appeals court reversing three of the charges and Gwin later re-sentencing him to the 15 years.

Prosecutors accused gray of stealing millions, though his attorneys said the figures are elevated.

White has never been charged or officially implicated relative to Gray's longtime public corruption scheme, and the two are no longer friends, sources said in 2005 when Gray was sentenced.

White was succeeded as mayor by Jane Campbell, who is White and the first and only woman mayor of Cleveland, Campbell losing reelection in 2005 to current Mayor Frank Jackson, a former city council president and the city's third Black mayor who is serving a historic fourth term.

Prosecutors said at Gray's trial that the bribery of contractors was in exchange for lucrative contracts for them, a corruption-scheme, said prosecutors, that went on for some 14 years, Gray even pocketing a great deal of the monies for himself.

Former East Cleveland mayor Emmanuel Onunwor was among those who accepted bribes from him, Onunwor, who backed out of a deal to wear a wire so the feds could catch Gray and other culprits, convicted on bribery and other racketeering charges before Gray's case went to trial and sentenced in 2004 to nine years in federal prison.

Onunwor burst into tears we he was cornered by the FBI, authorities sai, his son now in prison for killing his mother, also the former East Cleveland mayor's ex-wife, while he was serving time, the conflict arising allegedly because his son's mother allegedly aided the FBI against him.

Gray, however, would not testify against or snitch on his friends and public officials at issue as ordered, Judge Gwin, in turn, adding on 18 months at sentencing 14 and a half years ago for contempt of court.