Pictured are Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge John P. O'Donnell, Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Cowell (wearing striped tie), Bishop Eugene Ward (wearing purple), political strategist Jerry Primm (wearing blue tie), and activists Mariah Crenshaw and Alfred Porter Jr (wearing cap), all of whom are against O'Donnell's third bid for the Ohio Supreme Court, O'Donnell facing Justice Sharon Kennedy via the November election.
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Written by field reporter Rhonda Crowder (Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher and editor, contributed to this story)
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge John P. O'Donnell is once again running for a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court, but some local Cleveland politicians, community leaders and activists are urging citizens to vote against him in November, the Democratic judge losing a bid for the state's high court in 2014 to Justice Judith French, a Republican, and two years later in 2016 to Justice Pat Fischer, also a Republican.
A longtime common pleas judge O'Donnell, 55, faces Justice Sharon Kennedy 58, in November for his third try for the Ohio Supreme Court, Kennedy the Republican nominee and a justice on the court since 2012.
He is in political trouble in his own county, and under fire by Black activists, clergy and some members of Cleveland City Council, an organized effort to keep him off the high-court bench led by Cleveland Ward 9 Councilman Kevin Conwell.
Conwell led a similar effort four- years- ago in 2016 when O'Donnell lost by a little more than 22,000 votes to Justice Fischer, who at the time was a presiding judge on the 1st District Court of Appeals in Hamilton County.
O'Donnell is the judge who acquitted Michael Brelo in 2015 of voluntary manslaughter charges, the since fired Cleveland police officer a culprit in the Nov 29, 2012 shooting deaths of unarmed Blacks Timothy Russell, 43, and Malissa Williams, 30, Williams and Russell gunned down following a high speed 22-minute car chase that began in downtown Cleveland and ended with a massacre in the parking lot of Heritage Middle School in neighboring East Cleveland.
Some 71 protesters were arrested after the Brelo verdict came down, and on charges ranging from resisting arrest to felonious assault.
That infamous verdict by O'Donnell continues to haunt the judge.
"You can't let somebody go for killing Black folk and expect us to vote for you," said Conwell, an east side city lawmaker since 2001 who represents Glenville and University Circle, and one of eight Blacks on the 17-member, all Democratic city council.
Councilman Conwell said a committee will be meeting with groups from Akron, Youngstown, Cincinnati, Columbus and Toledo in a statewide grassroots effort against O'Donnell's Supreme Court bid because of his Brelo verdict, and its aftermath on the Black community.
Thirteen Cleveland police officers, including officer Brelo, and none of them Black, fired a combined 137 shots into the stationary 1979 Malibu Classic at Heritage Middle School that Russell was driving that dark November night in 2012, and with Williams as a horrified passenger, the horrific shooting drawing the name "137 shots" as a reminder of how heinous and extensive the shooting was.
An anxious Brelo, who is White, jumped onto the hood of Russell's car and shot an astonishing 49 bullets into the windshield of the automobile, and he was the only one of the 13 cops that did the shooting who got prosecuted, and later fired, a firing upheld by an arbitrator chosen, per the union agreement, by the city and the Cleveland Police Patrolman's Association.
Five others officers were fired too, but later exonerated by an arbitrator, and some supervisors were disciplined, two of them prosecuted and later exonerated on a misdemeanor charge of dereliction of duty.
Bishop Eugene Ward, executive pastor of Greater Love Missionary Baptist Church in Cleveland and a seasoned Civil Rights activist, said Black voters must act in solidarity against O'Donnell, even if it offends the Democrats.
"We're not concerned about Democrats or Republicans," said Rev. Ward, who is working with Conwell and community activists on the O'Donnell issue. "We're concerned about justice. Brelo fired 49 bullets out of one gun."
Williams and Russell were homeless and struggling with drug addiction, not enough to warrant the police chase from Cleveland to East Cleveland in which another officer who escaped prosecution told a county grand jury that he mistook Russell's car backfiring for a shot at him.
The chase ultimately resulted in some 65 quad cars and more than 100 police officers from both Cleveland and East Cleveland, the state finding that some 64 of those officers violated protocol.
But the 13 cops who shot and killed Williams and Russell execution-style, including Brelo, were Cleveland police officers as the city remains a party, along with the U.S. Department of Justice, to a consent decree for police reforms.
The city of Cleveland later settled a wrongful death lawsuit for $3 million that was split between the victims' families, Russell the father to a disabled adult son.
Other celebrated Cleveland police killings of Black people that led to the consent decree instituted in 2015 are 12-year-old Tamir Rice and Tanisha Anderson, both killed in 2014, and aspiring rapper Kenneth Smith in 2012, those three cases resulting in no charges against the officers at issue and, like the Williams- Russell wrongful death case, settled by the city for millions of dollars.
Brelo and his police union lawyers chose a bench trial before O'Donnell instead of a trial by jury, say sources, because the deal was cut long before the trial for O'Donnell to set Brelo free for unmercifully killing two innocent and unarmed Blacks.
Councilman Conwell complains that Judge O'Donnell, following his 2015 verdict in the Brelo case, should have never been supported by Democrats and the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party as their nominee to seek a seat on the Ohio Supreme Court, whether in 2012, or 2016, where he lost his second quest for the seat, or now in 2020.
"With Judge O'Donnell, the Democrats are taking people for granted," Conwell said.
Cuyahoga County, with the majority Black city of Cleveland the largest city in the county, is roughly 29 percent Black.
It is a Democratic stronghold.
O'Donnell hopes to unseat Justice Kennedy this fall, and former secretary of state Jennifer Brunner, a 10th District Court of Appeals judge in Franklin County and also a Democrat like O'Donnell, hopes to do the same to Justice French regarding the other seat up for grabs on the Ohio Supreme Court in November.
The court is comprised of five Republicans and two Democrats and would tilt Democratic if both O'Donnell and Brunner were to win, a dilemma facing some Black Democrats who say that while O'Donnell may be unfit for the state's high court, he is, nonetheless, a Democrat.
Ohio's supreme court justices, led by Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, a Republican and former lieutenant governor, will tackle a litany of issues on upcoming dockets, from reproductive rights to property and voting rights, and any disputes arising when the Republican-dominated state legislature redraws Ohio's congressional map after the 2020 census.
Aside from two seats on the largely female Ohio Supreme Court, the Republicans hold all of the statewide offices in Ohio, including the offices of governor, secretary of state, auditor, attorney general, and treasurer.
Justice Kennedy is already raking in endorsements over O'Donnell in Cleveland's Black community, and in O'Donnell's county of Cuyahoga.
"G-PAC endorsed Justice Kennedy and I'm a member of G-PAC, so I endorse Justice Kennedy," said political strategist Jerry Primm, referencing a recent endorsement by the new political action group comprised of Cleveland clergy and activists and spearheaded by Bishop Eugene Ward. "She [Justice Kennedy] makes herself available for our community and is open to conversations about racial equity."
Fred Ward, president of FIINPAC, is urging Ohio voters across racial, ethic and partisan lines to vote to keep Justice Kennedy in lieu of electing O'Donnell in her place, and so is Mariah Crenshaw, a community activist.
"We not only need to not vote for him [Judge O'Donnell], he needs to withdraw from the race," Crenshaw said. "We don't reward bad behavior."
Activist and Black on Black Crime President Alfred Porter Jr., who has led protests as late as this year outside of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center in downtown Cleveland against O'Donnell, said the judge is allegedly unworthy to be a judge on any court, not only because he arbitrarily acquitted Michael Brelo of manslaughter charges in the Williams-Russell 137 shots case, but also relative to documented impropriety in Cuyahoga County civil cases before him regarding the gross theft of residents' homes through illegal foreclosures for JPMorgan Chase Banks and others.
"Judge O'Donnell does not need to be elected to the Ohio Supreme Court and activists want him off the common pleas court in our county where he currently sits," said Porter.
Homeowners who complain of the arbitrary theft of their homes are harassed by cops, crooked politicians and racist prosecutors, O'Donnell's judicial colleagues, and others, public records reveal.
Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com,the most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest. Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com. 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.
