CLEVELAND, Ohio-The Rev. Charles "C.J." Matthews, senior pastor at Mt. Sinai Baptist Church in Cleveland, was sentenced to 15 months in prison yesterday for failing to pay $90 thousand in IRS income taxes collected by the mega church between Oct. 2005 and Jan. 2007 on the wages of church employees.

And the sentence, which was handed down by Federal District Court Judge Patricia Gaughan, came in spite of a plethora of support from members of the Black community, many of whom wrote letters on his behalf.

They include retired U.S. Rep. Louis Stokes, and Blaine Griffin, vice chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party and director of the Community Relations Board for the city of Cleveland.

The courtroom was packed with supporters, including former Cuyahoga County Recorder Lillian Greene, also a retired common pleas court judge, Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals Judge Larry Jones, clergy, and Community Activist Khalid Samad, who leads Peace in the Hood.

A former assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutor accused of harassing Blacks from the bench and defaming those that challenge public corruption in Cuyahoga County, Gaughan was not moved by the pleas from Black leaders to hand Matthews probation, an indication that Cleveland's Old Black Political Guard is losing its clout.

Federal prosecutors said at sentencing that Matthews had stolen more than $200 thousand from his church, which sits at E. 75th St. and Woodland Ave. in the heart of the ghetto.

Matthews, who had agreed to a plea deal, told reporters that he had done the crime and would serve his time, though Gaughan, who is White, left him little choice.

U.S. District Attorney Steve Dettlebach, who brought the charges, is said to have befriended and hung out with the popular pastor who has led the church for 23 years and is a respected Civil Rights leader, only to have turned on him later, sources say.

Also president of the United Pastors in Mission, greater Cleveland's most powerful venue of Black clergy, Matthews, 60, was urged by group members not to step down when he told them at a meeting 3 months ago of the criminal charges where he said that "I will be okay if I have to go away."

And go away he will, with a reporting date to prison that has not been made public.

Prosecutors say Matthews, who was not indicted but charged as an information because of his cooperation with federal prosecutors, used the collected tax monies that he did not hand over to the IRS for personal expenses, an allegation elevated because he and his wife own a home worth more than $500 thousand in Solon, a Cleveland suburb.

Matthews has friends, and enemies too, angering the leadership team at the Call and Post Newspaper, Cleveland's Black press, after he and the Rev Dr. Marvin McMickle, then senior pastor at Cleveland's prominent Antioch Baptist Church, publicly challenged an editorial cartoon that depicts State Sen Nina Turner (D-25), a Cleveland Democrat, as an Aunt Jemima.

The dispute with Turner and Call and Post officials, namely associate publisher and editor Connie Harper and general counsel George Forbes, who is also the long time president of the Cleveland NAACP, began brewing after the lawmaker, as the only prominent Black politician in the county, joined Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason and the Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper in pushing Issue 6, a government reform measure that Cuyahoga County voters overwhelmingly approved in 2009.

The newly adopted county reform measure replaced the previously elected county sheriff, auditor, recorder, clerk of courts, coroner, engineer, treasurer, and three-member board of commissioners with an elected 11-member County Council and elected county executive, now Ed FitzGerald, the former mayor of Lakewood, Oh., and a former FBI agent.

Black leaders have said that Mason crafted Issue 6 with an all White team of county movers and shakers and that the county executive has too much power, and that the Mason posse gerrymandered the 11 county districts to the detriment of the Black community because only one council seat is guaranteed to be won by a Black, though four Blacks were ultimately elected with C. Ellen Connally, a retired Cleveland Municipal Court judge, subsequently elected as council president by her peers.

“They gave all the power to one White man. They gerrymandered the districts and Nina Turner was the only Black they consulted,” State Rep. Barbara Boyd (D-9) told The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com at the time the controversy was at its hottest moment and following FitzGerald's election last year. And Forbes took on Mason prior to the adoption of Issue 6 saying he could not show how Blacks would benefit with Mason saying Issue 6 is necessary because of public corruption by some of the ousted elected county officials and accusing the local NAACP president of being "disingenuous."

And the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Ohio's largest newspaper, did little to quash the situation, running articles and editorials that called for the community to boycott the Call and Post over the Turner fiasco, with some Black leaders saying that it was the hypocritical Plain Dealer itself that led the way in stereotypical cartoons against Blacks, Black women in particular.

Since Matthews' tax troubles were made public the Plain Dealer, at its online venue of Cleveland.com, reiterated the Aunt Jemima controversy in an article about Matthews, reigniting the fight between Ohio's largest newspaper and the state's Black press, with distributions in Columbus and Cincinnati, in addition to Cleveland, though Call and Post officials refused then and still now to honor the request by Matthews and the United Pastors in Mission to apologize to Turner. That article at Cleveland.com, however, has since been taken down.

Matthews, who has dined with presidents and other prominent movers and shakers, has a long list of community service also as a member of the the Greater Cleveland Partnership and the National Baptist Convention U.S.A Inc, chairman of Cleveland NAACP's Black Leadership Commission on Aids and board member of the local chapter of the United Way, among other activities.

Matthews and his wife Jacquelyn have four adult children and three grandchildren.