Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor

Former Democratic Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Brown

Democratic Berea Municipal Court Judge Mark Comstock

From the Metro Desk of the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com and Cleveland Urban News.Com (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor has assigned retired Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Mabel Jasper to replace Impersonating Visiting Judge Mary Grace Trimboli of Toledo, Oh. in the malicious prosecution case of journalist and community activist Kathy Wray Coleman that is illegally pending in the Berea Municipal Court.

Trimboli quit the case last week because of prejudice and harassment against Coleman and because she is not a retired judge permitted to be assigned as a visiting judge under the Ohio Constitution. She had been unconstitutionally assigned by former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Brown to replace Berea Municipal Court Judge Mark Comstock following his harassment of Coleman.

Brown was appointed last May by former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland, who lost in Nov. to Republican Gov. John Kasich, to replace Republican Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, who died unexpectedly in April, but lost by an embarrassing 68 percent of the vote in Nov. to O'Connor, a former Lt. Gov. under former Republican Gov. Bob Taft and a regular justice in the court since 2003. 

"Judge Jasper is a respected retired judge and had Ohio's high court been more sensitive to assigning fair judges like her to cases when corrupt, racist and crazy judges like Berea Municipal Court Judge Mark Comstock recuse themselves after prejudice against Black defendants and others a constitutional ballot amendment and a state law that Ohio trial court judges are at all times sitting judges accountable to the community and assigned by random draw might not have been as necessary, though we still want it," said Coleman. "Former Chief Justice Thomas Moyer rarely assigned retired Black judges like Judge Jasper because he was too busy fixing cases against people with corrupt non-judges like Trimboli and retired Lorain Municipal Court Judge Gustalo Nunez, a stool pigeon to replace racist and corrupt Lyndhurst Municipal Court Judge Mary Kaye Bozza after she harasses Blacks and then gets off of cases."

A native of Alabama who moved to Cleveland with her family when she was 10 years old, Jasper graduated from Cleveland's Glenville High School and taught elementary school in the district for 20 years before getting her law degree and serving as an assistant attorney general and magistrate in the domestic relations court. She ran successfully for judge of the Cleveland Municipal Court in 1987 and retired in 2006 after serving six terms as a likable and respected judge on the bench.

The Imperial Women, which Coleman leads, and other activist groups want a constitutional amendment and state law requiring that Ohio's trial court judges are sitting judges assigned to cases by random draw at all times. The activists had planned a protest before a previously scheduled trial by Trimboli in Berea Municipal Court but it was canceled after it was learned of the protest.

Activists are angry because the court has no jurisdiction to even hear the case since a municipal ordinance adopted by Middleburg Hts voters requires that cases like Coleman's originate in the mayor's court and only proceed to Berea Municipal Court upon pleas of not guilty to the traffic citation and misdemeanor charge, both of which Coleman said are still illegally pending because of her previous writings in the Call and Post Newspaper, her current articles at www.realneo.us and www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, and her community activism as to the Imperial Ave. Murders and otherwise. 

Trimboli, 57, is neither a retired nor current judge but is illegally posing as one and was on the Toledo Municipal Court bench last in 2005 at age 51 and did not seek reelection. Hence, her assignments to Coleman's and other cases violate the Ohio Constitution, which allows only retired judges to serve as visiting judges on special assignments to replace judges relative to conflict or bias.

Coleman is charged with a traffic citation and misdemeanor obstruction of official business allegedly for weaving and not giving her name to Middleburg Hts police on Oct 30, 2009 after they pulled the car over, though she was a passenger and her then attorney Wayne Kerek was in the driver's seat with an expired driver's license and did not even get cited.

Data reveal that Comstock snatched the case before it could go to the mayor's court as required by city ordinance because Middleburg Hts Mayor Gary Starr is friends with Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, whose Chief Operating Officer Darnell Brown chairs the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District Board that Starr is also a 17-year member of, where he represents about 39 small cities, including his own. Jackson, says Coleman, is upset with the Imperial Women for protesting in front of his home for an investigation around the murders and for questioning the fact that he is a Black mayor and has appointed no Blacks or women as law director, safety director, chief of police, chief prosecutor of ems commissioner in a majority Black major metropolitan city.

Activists say the insensitivity of Jackson's all non Black law enforcement leadership team contributed to the fiasco around the murders including the release of Sowell from police custody on an attempted rape complaint in 2008 by Gladys Wade, who got away,  so that he could then go allegedly murder the last six of the 11 Black women. Sowell is now charged with the alleged rape of Wade and awaits trial for June 6 on that, the Imperial Ave Murders, and other charges before Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose.

According to Coleman, when she moved to dismiss the case before Comstock for a lack of jurisdiction because it belonged in the mayor's court, he stole her bond without a bond forfeiture hearing, issued a warrant and then falsified public records and lied to say she had an arraignment and a pretrial, and had made a plea. She said she was arrested last July with Jackson's help and hauled before Comstock and that he threatened her saying he objected to the activists wanting judges assigned at random because they should be handpicked at the Ohio Supreme Court level and elsewhere and that she could do nothing about it. He then withdrew and Brown illegally appointed Trimboli who, according to public records, began harassing Coleman immediately by trying to go to trial without jurisdiction, an arraignment, pleas in the case, or any discovery to assess any evidence by the prosecution.

Ohio Supreme Court records reveal that Trimboli has been assigned to almost 50 cases in the Berea Municipal Court since 2006 that Comstock has recused himself from for either bias or conflict , allowing the traveling impersonating judge to come to town from Toledo to  to misuse tax payer monies and to routinely harass Black and other maliciously prosecuted people one by one. But when O'Connor became chief justice this year it stopped, in Berea. 

A comprehensive investigation as to Trimboli's behavior on cases aside from Berea Municipal Court that Moyer and Brown assigned her to in their former roles as chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court is underway, Coleman said.