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Former Cleveland Judge Pinkey Carr gets probation in falsification case as Black activists want Cuyahoga Judge Nancy Fuerst prosecuted for violating the Civil Rights of indigent Blacks by denying them speedy trials, public trials, indigent counsel, etc...

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Pictured are former Cleveland judge Pinkey Carr and Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Nancy Fuerst

By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in chief.....Investigative article below

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com

CLEVELAND, Ohio —Former Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr, whom the Ohio Supreme Court disbarred and removed from the 13-member bench last year, has pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of falsification and was handed four months probation by a visiting judge in the case.

Via a plea deal, Carr pleaded no contest to three counts of falsification on Wednesday, each a first-degree misdemeanor, and was subsequently found guilty by the visiting judge. She was sentenced to four months of probation and is required to pay court costs.


“When the judge acts like a jester, justice goes awry,” Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost said in a statement. “Today’s criminal sentencing enforces that no one is above the law.”


Yost is a Republican and Carr, who is Black, a Democrat. Yost's office prosecuted the case against Carr upon referral and likely, say sources, because current County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley was once her indirect boss when she was an assistant county prosecutor, and Cleveland city prosecutors bowed out.


Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation detectives found Carr arraigned defendants without prosecutors present and that she also made false statements in the court’s records.


False statements are routine for Ohio judges seeking to interfere with prosecutions to help prosecutors win their cases and when defendants try to correct them after their attorneys of record refuse to stand up for them they are often threatened with contempt of court and jail.


Black community activists remain concerned that Carr may have been singled out for prosecution unlike other judges, White judges in particular, because she is intelligent, Black and outspoken, and she has said that there is a double standard for Black judges in Ohio, a pivotal state for presidential elections, sometimes.


Black on Black Crime activist Alfred Porter Jr.,, also a women's rights advocate, said that "activists are seeking criminal charges against corrupt White judges like seasoned Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Nancy Fuerst for blatantly interfering with the Civil Rights of poor Black and other criminal defendants who come before them."


In short, activists say she is a bully who will stop at nothing to get her way, illegal or legal.

 

The embattled judge is also accused of threatening defendants with jail for correcting her when she tries to corrupt the record at pretrials with falsehoods, and covering up fixed indictments where the prosecutor's office has colluded with the clerks of courts office to change grand jury indictments to their liking, including increasing criminal charges and acting as if the grand jury amended the indictment.


The county public defender's office says that prosecutors and clerks are changing indictments, according to court filings and motions made by former chief public defender Mark Stanton, a pro-cop public defender who covered up cop impropriety in cases involving maliciously prosecuted and innocent Blacks and has since retired.


Blacks and others have a constitutional right to a speedy trial, a a public trial and appointed counsel in serious cases if they are deemed indigent. They also have a statutory right under Ohio law to a speedy trial and to indigent counsel.


Porter went on to say that Fuerst seemingly believes she is above the law and that she has absolutely no respect for the rule of law, particularly when the defendants are Black and public corruption is at work that she seeks to cover up.


" Activists have sat in the courtroom of Judge Fuerst for years and witnessed her flagrantly violate the Civil Rights of maliciously prosecuted Blacks who come before her, and with the urging of unscrupulous assistant county prosecutors under the guidance of County Prosecutor Mike O'Malley," said Porter. " We have not seen such egregious behavior from a judge in years and we want Judge Fuerst disbarred, removed from the bench and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."


Porter said that activists never should have backed Mr O'Malley for prosecutor.

 

" Activists made a mistake in believing that Mike O'Malley would be better than Tim McGinty when he has proved to be just as bad," Porter said.


O'Malley was elected in 2016, ousting then county prosecutor Tim McGinty, who fell out with the Black community and Black leaders for protecting cops who aggressively gunned down unarmed Blacks from indictments and with the county Democratic Party for complaining on judges about their malfeasance in rambling letters or briefs to the Ohio Supreme Court.


Activists say that public records show that Judge Fuerst is colluding with the county prosecutor's office in erroneously denying Black defendants speedy trials, public trials and indigent counsel, among a host of other alleged illegal activity. She does not want public trials, they say, because she does not want the media and others to catch on to her wrongdoing at trials, which sources say is customary for the judge, who purportedly brags that she has protection by the Ohio Supreme Court to do as she pleases to people, right or wrong.


Data also show that the arrogant and angry Judge Fuerst is refusing to journalize trial dates by order and when Blacks fail to appear because they were not ordered to come she issues capius warrants and removes their indigent counsel saying poor Blacks who get warrants from her automatically lose their constitutional and statutory right to indigent counsel This is not true where the U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 in Tinker vs Des Moines made it clear that people do not so easily shed their constitutional rights , a case in which public high school students who were penalized and denied their free speech rights for wearing arm bands to protest the Vietnam war prevailed. In other words, Blacks and others do not shed their constitutional and statutory rights at the courthouse gate and activists say Judge Nancy Fuerst is a runaway, out of control judge whose arbitrary and capricious behavior merits an immediate investigation by authorities and subsequent criminal charges.


The Ohio Supreme Court decided 5-2 last year to indefinitely suspend Carr's law license, a serious action undertaken by the state's majority White and largely Republican high court that operated to immediately remove the Black judge from the largely Black municipal court bench.


On the bench since 2012 before her suspension, Carr, a former assistant county prosecutor who led the prosecution as to the convictions of the late serial killer Anthony Sowell, who strangled and murdered 11 Black women at his home on Imperial Avenue in Cleveland on the city's east side and later died on death row, can apply to the court for reinstatement of her law license in two years. Her attorney had requested progressive discipline that would have permitted Carr to stay on the bench and told the court that her client began having issues only in the past two years and that she accepted responsibility for her behavior.


Sources also say that the decision to remove Carr from the bench was "racist, sexist, and politically motivated."


Similarly situated White and male judges, data show , were not treated as harshly by the office of disciplinary counsel for the Ohio Supreme Court, which recommended a two year suspension rather than an indefinite suspension. ans few of the White judges who get in trouble are later prosecuted, research shows.


In getting disbarred or suspended indefinitely Carr was accused of violating the ethical and other provisions of the Judicial Code of Conduct and the Ohio Lawyer's Professional Code of Responsibility. In its 5-2 decision to strip Carr of her judgeship and law license, Republican Justices O'Connor and Fischer, and Justice Brunner, though a Democrat, voted to suspend her indefinitely as did the two stand-in judges for Democrats Johnb Donnelly and Melody Stewart, both former Cuyahoga County judges who recused themselves from the case for that reason, they claim.

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Justices DeWine and Kennedy, now the chief justice of the court, dissented with Kennedy writing in her dissent that it was unfair to suspend Carr indefinitely based on the data before the court, and particularly since the office of disciplinary counsel for the court only recommended a two year suspension of her law license.

It is the second time the state's high court has suspended a Cleveland judge from the bench since the removal in 2014 of former judge Angela Stokes, a daughter of the late 11th congressional district congressman Louis Stokes and a niece of former Cleveland mayor Carl B Stokes, a late Black mayor and a former Cleveland municipal court judge himself. But Angela Stokes, who is older than Carr, was allowed to continue practicing law, and to draw upon her retirement where applicable, and she was not prosecuted by the city of Cleveland.

Carr stood accused in several complaints before the bar in past years of issuing illegal capias warrants, which is routine for municipal and county judges, dismissing cases without the approval of city prosecutors, carrying on court when Cleveland Administrative and Presiding Judge Michelle Earley thought she had closed court due to the pandemic, and of mistreating and being rude to defendants and attorneys who came before her. Still, say her supporters, and on condition of anonymity, "she did what White and other judges traditionally do and her biggest problem was being strong, Black and female, and angering White men in power." Others say Carr's style was harsh at times and that she was abrasive and sometimes had a prosecutorial demeanor.


The job of judge, whether a municipal or common pleas judge of Cuyahoga County, is no easy task as judges must juggle crowded case dockets, limited resources, unruly defendants who will literally curse you out, as well as anxious and sometimes arrogant criminal defense attorneys. Some of the judges are corrupt and unfair, data show, two of them formerly on the general division common pleas bench imprisoned and kicked off the bench via an ongoing county public corruption probe.


Carr had drawn the ire of Cleveland's mainstream media, which is routine when complaints are leveled against Black judges by prominent White men This time those of prominence who lodged complaints against her include then Chief Cuyahoga County Public Defender Mark Stanton, who has since retired, and well-known criminal defense attorney Ian Friedman, the former president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association.


White male judges brought up on disciplinary charges like Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge Daniel Gaul, a judge who regularly hands Blacks excessive sentences, breaks the rues and often loses on appeal for murder convictions of Blacks that occur following suspect activity at trial in his courtroom, get off easy they are rarely even disciplined research shows.


A since removed Bedford Municipal Court judge, convicted Harry Jacob, who allegedly pimped women in his court, ran an outright brothel, and falsified court dockets and documents, and even after criminal convictions of crimes in office, still has his law license, compliments of the Ohio Supreme Court. Moreover, an investigation by Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com also reveals that Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Judge John O'Donnell has stolen homes for JPMorgan Chase Bank from Blacks in illegal foreclosure cases before him coupled with using his power and influence to have Blacks who complained maliciously prosecuted and stalked by police at their homes and otherwise, police routinely breaking into their homes and stealing personal property include high- priced cars.


A Democrat and three time loser as to three unsuccessful bids for a Supreme Court seat O'Donnell, however, like Gaul, remains free of any discipline from the state's highest court. And there are so many more White judges, both men and women alike, who do as they please in Ohio without consequences, and to the detriment of so many innocent and poor Black people, and others.


Municipal court judges in Ohio handle cases bound over to the common pleas court for possible felony indictments and cases involving traffic, non-traffic misdemeanors, evictions and small civil claims (in which the amount in controversy does not exceed $15,000.).


Cleveland is a largely Black major American city of some 372,000 people and a Democratic stronghold It is the largest city in Cuyahoga County, a 29 percent Black county, and also a Democratic stronghold.


Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, the most read Black digital newspaper and Black blog 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.

Last Updated on Monday, 11 September 2023 01:51

Ohio 11th Congressional District Community Caucus annual Labor Day Parade and Festival are Mon, Sept 4, 2023 in Cleveland, and will be led by Congresswoman Shontel Brown....By Clevelandurbannews.com, Ohio's Black digital news leader

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Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com Tel: (216) 659-0473. Email: editor@clevelandurbannews.com

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


CLEVELAND, OHIO – Ohio Congresswoman Shontel M. Brown (pictured), a Warrensville Heights Democrat who leads Ohio's largely Black 11th congressional district, which includes Cleveland and several of its eastern suburbs of Cuyahoga County, will serve as grand marshal for the annual 11th Congressional District Community Caucus Labor Day Parade & Festival on Mon., Sept 4, 2023. The parade will kick off at 11am from A.J. Rickoff school at East 147th Street and Kinsman Road on Cleveland's majority Black east side, organizers said.

Last year's event drew thousands, organizers said. This year's theme is "Empowering the People."

The parade will proceed down Kinsman Road to Luke Easter Park for festivities, which will include a few speeches, local vendors, and area marching bands and other entertainment.

The celebrated and historical event was initiated in 1971 with a picnic spearheaded by former congressman Louis Stokes, his younger brother Carl Stokes, and a cadre of  influential local Black leaders connected to the Stokes brothers (Editor's note: The late former congressman Louis Stokes, also a lawyer, was the first Black congressman of  Ohio and of what was eventually redistricted to become what is now the 11th congressional district, and his late brother, Carl B. Stokes, became the first Black mayor of Cleveland and of a major American city when voters elected him to lead Cleveland in 1967).

The annual political and community gathering that in the last decade has become a  caucus fundraising event where parade participants must now pay a fee, draws mainly Democrats and state, local and even national political figures like the late activist Dick Gregory, Civil Rights icon the Rev Jesse Jackson Sr., and Hillary Clinton in 2016 to Luke Easter Park on Labor Day. In 2020 during the height of  the pandemic the event was canceled, but it resumed in 2021 with thousands coming out to participate.

During former congressman Louis Stokes' political heyday during the 1980s and 90s, the annual parade alone, inclusive of spectators,  could easily draw in excess of 25,000 people. (Editor's note: Clinton was the Democratic nominee for the president in 2016 when she spoke in Cleveland at the annual 11th Congressional District Caucus Labor Day event, though she ultimately lost the presidential election that year to Donald Trump, a Republican ousted in 2020 by current U.S. President Joe Biden).

Notably, the annual Labor Day event will proceed on Monday without former congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge at the helm. Fudge is brown's predecessor and ally who is now the U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) with the administration of President Joe Biden, the former vice president under former president Barack Obama, the nation's first Black president.

Congresswoman Brown, 48, emerged as the winner among a crowded field of Democrats competing in a special Democratic primary election  to replace Fudge after defeating her 12 opponents, including the also popular Nina Turner, a well-financed front-runner and a former Ohio senator who co-chaired the presidential campaign of U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016, and who came in second in that primary election. Turner also lost another Democratic primary bid for the congressional seat via an effort to unseat Brown  a second time.

A former  chairwoman of the county Democratic party, and its first Black and first female chairperson, Brown is Fudge's protege, and her ally.

One of two of Ohio's 16 congressional districts crafted under the redistricting provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, Ohio's 11th congressional district faced redistricting t like the state's  other congressional districts, only four of those congressional seats held by Democrats. And one congressional district in the state was lost due population decline from the last U.S. census report, Ohio now with 15 majority Republican congressional districts.

Both Cleveland, which is largely Black, and Cuyahoga County, Ohio's second largest of its 88 counties and a 29 percent Black county, are Democratic  strongholds.

Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.comthe most read Black digital newspaper in Ohio and in the Midwest, and the most read independent digital news in Ohio. 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.

 

 

By Kathy Wray Coleman. Coleman is a former public school biology teacher and a Black political, legal and investigative reporter who trained for 17 years at the Call and Post Newspaper in Cleveland, Ohio.

Last Updated on Monday, 04 September 2023 19:21

Ohio Senator Nickie Antonio opposes death penalty execution methods in Ohio as inhumane and not a deterrent to crime.... By Clevelandurbannews.com, Ohio's Black digital news leader

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COLUMBUS, Ohio – Ohio Senate Minority Leader Nickie J. Antonio (D-Lakewood) (pictured), a Lakewood Democrat whose  23rd state legislative district includes 14 of Cleveland' 17 wards, responded to a Spectrum News report that Ohio prosecutors are seeking to resume executions using nitrogen hypoxia.

The state senator previously introduced  Senate Bill 101 ,which  would abolish the death penalty in Ohio and instead pursue life without parole for capital crimes. Her measure has   bipartisan support from joint sponsor  state Sen. Steve Huffman (R-Tipp City) and  some one-third of the Ohio Senate coming on board as co-sponsors, including Senators Blessing (R-Cincinnati), Craig (D-Columbus), DeMora (D-Columbus), Hicks-Hudson (D-Toledo), Ingram (D-Cincinnati), Lang (R-West Chester), Reynolds (R-Canal Winchester), Roegner (R-Hudson), Smith (D-Euclid), and Sykes (D-Akron).

"Nitrogen hypoxia is untested, unproven and inhumane," said Sen. Antonio. "Even the American Veterinary Association has long rejected the use of nitrogen gas as a method to euthanize animals. There is far too much uncertainty surrounding how a state would carry out an execution by this method and no scientific evidence to support its use."

A fighter down state and a seasoned state legislator, Antonio is a long term opponent of Ohio's death penalty, joining Civil Rights groups such as the NAACP in saying it is inhumane and racist, and that data show that  it does not deter heinous crimes like advocates say.

Nitrogen hypoxia is an untested execution method in which death would be caused by forcing the inmate to breathe in only nitrogen. In 2022, Airgas, an industrial gas distributor, announced its opposition to the use of nitrogen to end human life. No state has attempted to put an inmate to death by this experimental method.

"We won't go back to barbaric botched executions," said Antonio. "We must be better as a society than our most heinous criminals. This is yet another example of why it is necessary to abolish the death penalty. The legislature should focus on passing Senate Bill 101, instead of suggesting grotesque experimentation."

Senate Bill 101 now awaits further hearings in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Last Updated on Wednesday, 30 August 2023 00:50

Councilman Richard Starr leads Cleveland Ward 5's 2nd annual parade and festival.....By Clevelandurbannews.com, Ohio's Black digital news leader

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Cleveland, Ohio (August 25, 2023) - With many young people having started or soon starting the new school year, Councilman Richard Starr (pictured)(Ward 5)  hosted the second annual Ward 5 Festival Resource Fair & Parade last weekend.


Dignitaries there included Council President Blaine Griffin, some other council persons, and Cleveland Municipal Housing Court Magistrate Jeff Johnson, a former councilman himself.

The parade kicked off on Sat. Aug 19 at 3:00 pm in the rear parking lot of Jane Addams High School on the city's east side  and will end at the Friendly Inn Settlement, the site of the Resource Fair.

The Resource Fair ran from 3:00 pm to 9:00 pm and  included book-bag distributions, free haircuts and braiding for youth, free food, live entertainment, carnival rides and activities, and a DJ competition. The winner of the DJ competition won a year contract to be the official DJ for all Ward 5 events hosted by Councilman Starr.

The organizer of the Ward 5 Festival Resource Fair & Parade, Starr is an avid supporter of community and education.


"August is the time when young people get reacquainted with all their friend," said Starr. "It's a time for friendship, education, and growth. I remember the excitement I had when it was time to go back to East Tech every year. I wanted to show our youth that the community is excited for their return to learning and is here to support them."

The Resource Fair and parade were also sponsored by community partners, including Burten, Bell, Carr, Development Inc., Campus District, Care Alliance Health Center, Friendly Inn Settlement, Midtown Cleveland Inc., Next Generation Construction, Slavic Village Development, the Vernon Family Foundation, and the Word Church.


Former President Donald Trump surrenders to authorities in Georgia for a mugshot and arrest on 13 criminal charges.... By Clevelandurbannews.com, Ohio's Black digital news leader

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CLEVELAND, Ohio-  Former president Donald Trump (pictured)  surrendered in Atlanta, Georgia Thursday evening relative to 13 charges issued Aug 14 against him and 18 affiliates by a grand jury in Fulton County District Attorney Fanie Willis' investigation into 2020 election interference.

The president then headed to the airport to board a plane to fly back to New jersey At court he was required to take a mugshot and was booked, finger- printed and then released. His high-priced attorneys had previously arranged a $200,000 bond in an unprecedented criminal case that Trump has called "a travesty of justice."

He is the first former president to face a mugshot and criminal charges.He branded this latest indictment, a widespread 14-count indictment, another witch hunt to try to derail his candidacy for president as campaign donations continue to pile up after each indictment.This latest indictment marks the fourth time the former president has been indicted since last year announcing that he is making a third bid for the presidency, and in 2024 in a crowded field of GOP wannabees. The 18 co-defendants, charged collectively with 41 felony counts all together, include former Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, also the former mayor of New York City, former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark. Read the full 97-page indictment here.

Giuliani, charged with 13 counts, said in a statement that the indictments are an attempt to silence free speech and are "an affront to Democracy." He and and nearly all of the other co-defendants have surrendered and are out on bail pending trial.

The former president, still a big wig with the Republican Party and his political base, was also charged in Florida with illegally hoarding classified files at his estate there, Mar-a-Lago, and refusing to hand them back when asked, among other charges.

Last Updated on Friday, 25 August 2023 22:26

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