State Rep Bill Patmon (D-Cleveland)

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

 

The alleged culprits, said Coleman, include former Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Kathleen Ann Keough, Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Lynn McLaughlin Murray, Berea Municipal Court Judge Mark Comstock and Retired Visiting Berea Judge Michael Weigand, a former Barberton, Oh. judge who replaced Comstock in a malicious criminal case involving Coleman after Comstock was accused of repeatedly harassing the innocent Black woman. Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judges John O'Donnell and Timothy McGinty and county sheriff Bob Reid are also among the group, said Coleman.

 

"If the Cleveland FBI can prosecute former Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Steven Terry, who is Black, for alleged case fixing then the White judges that are harassing Blacks like me and fixing cases and otherwise disregarding the law in violation of our constitutional and statutory rights should be prosecuted too," said Coleman. "Unless, of course, race is the major determining factor on whether corrupt judges are prosecuted by the Cleveland FBI."

 

Keough, said Coleman, fixed a case for Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, Law Director Robert Triozzi, and a host of other members of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party in May 2009, allegedly in exchange for an endorsement from Jackson and Triozzi relative to her successful run last year for a seat on the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals. 

 

Transcripts of a trial before her in May of 2009 show outright corruption, though Coleman was exonerated of numerous charges including aggravated disorderly conduct. She says that she was illegally convicted of resisting arrest after Keough directed the jury to hear testimony from somebody she brought in to testify for sole arresting Cuyahoga Deputy Sheriff Gerald Pace, whom to date has not accused Coleman of resisting his illegal arrest in August 2008, and did not testify at trial. Then after Keough went on to the appellate court McLaughlin Murray was appointed in Jan. by outgoing Gov. Ted Strickland to complete Keough's unexpired term that ends this year, and to allegedly carry on case fixing for members of the county's Democratic Party, an embattled party where some 50 people have pleaded guilty to corruption related charges and former county judges Terry and Bridget McCafftery were convicted of crimes in office earlier this year, though neither has been sentenced and both vow to appeal. Former county auditor Frank Russo, among others, was also convicted and faces 22 years in prison after he finishes snitching.

 

"Public records reveal that McLaughin Murray, whom Jackson has also endorsed in her race this Nov. to hold on to her seat against Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Pinkey Carr, jailed Coleman on June 22 , 2011, after she had her illegally arrested while she was leading a violence against women rally at the Justice Center as the trial of suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell continues. After keeping Coleman jailed for 7 days the judge then sentenced her to time served, claiming that Coleman resisted Pace's 2008 arrest, and after she had promised Coleman's attorney, Sandra Harding, that she would hold a post verdict acquittal hearing to throw out the resisting arrest verdict. This is since it violates the Ohio Rules of Evidence and the Sixth Amendment, the latter of which requires that  cases like Coleman's be dismissed when police or other law enforcement authorities fail to accuse a person of a  police crime  like resisting arrest or even testify at a malicious trial around an illegal and affiliated arrest. 

 

Ironically, Pace came to the 2009 trial but Assistant City Prosecutor Lorraine Coyne, who maliciously prosecuted Coleman for Jackson, Triozzi and other corrupt office holders, said, according to the trial transcripts, that they did not need to call him to testify even though he was in the hallway, activity that Coleman says is common place and indicative of prosecutorial misconduct against innocent Black defendants that Jackson, Triozzi, Keough and other members of the county Democratic Party want destroyed.

 

Coleman said that her home has been burglarized 3 times in an unsuccessful attempt to secure the Keough Corruption Transcripts. 

 

"The worst thing in the world would be for voters to keep McLaughlin Murray on the bench where both she and Judge Keough, along with Judge O'Donnell, should all be disbarred, prosecuted and jailed, I believe," said Coleman.

 

The Berea Municipal Court case, according to Coleman, is just as bizarre and also involves unprecedented violations of her statutory and constitutional rights. 

 

In the Berea case Coleman is charged in Berea Municipal Court 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 police 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. She says the charge and traffic citation are all lies, though she has been denied an arraignment, the opportunity to make a plea, a jury trial, and numerous other required constitutional guarantees.

 

Coleman says that Kerek, who has since been suspended from the practice of law, lured her to the city of Middleburg Hts that he lived close by to in Strongsville, Oh. and allegedly contacted Middleburg Hts policeman Kevin Hoover to come arrest her in an unsuccessful effort to try to stop her from leading a protest on Nov. 10, 2009 at the county Justice Center over the murders of 11 Black women, whose remains were uncovered at the home of Sowell on Imperial Ave in Cleveland a week and a half earlier on Halloween day. 

 

Data reveal that Comstock snatched the case before it could go to the Middleburg Hts Mayor's Court as required by city ordinance and after refusing a motion to dismiss for a lack of jurisdiction, issued a warrant for Coleman's arrest while an affidavit of prejudice was pending before Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Presiding Judge Nancy Fuerst, whom Coleman says denies valid affidavits filed by people regardless of the merits to cover up judicial malfeasance for her colleagues. He then recused himself and the Ohio Supreme Court illegally assigned former Toledo Municipal Court Judge Mary Trimboli of Toledo, Oh., to hear the case. A valid affidavit of prejudice was denied against her too and she issued an illegal $6,000 bond against Coleman, that was put up,  after trying to force her to trial without an arraignment, pleas in the case, any pretrials, no discovery and absolutely no jurisdiction to hear the malicious case whatsoever. She  quit the case after Coleman advised that former judges cannot serve as vising judges where the Ohio Constitution mandates only retired judges.  She then removed Coleman's then attorney, Stephen Miles, so that subsequent harassment of the Black activist and long term journalist would go more smoothly. 

 

After Trimboli, the Republican led Ohio Supreme Court assigned former Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Mabel Jasper, who told Coleman by telephone the night of May 18, 2011 that she would not take the case, that a new judge would be assigned and that she did not have to appear because no trial could be held, particularly since her attorney of record had been removed from the case less than a week earlier. But the next day, on May 19, Comstock had court employees backdate the docket to suggest that the Ohio Supreme Court had appointed Weigant a day before by telephone. 

 

Weigand then issued an illegal warrant saying Coleman did not appear at court on May 19 to be tried without an attorney, an arraignment, any discovery, pleas in the case or jurisdiction to even hear it. This was  in part because Coleman led a rally later that day in front of the Cleveland Hts Police Station as to malfeasance there around the Imperial Ave. Murders. Weigand then had Coleman arrested on June 28. And because he could not forfeit the $6,000 bond put up by Atlas Bonding Company and Coleman's father, Dr. James M. Coleman, he just left it on the docket, held Coleman in a jail cell for 3 days and then said that she needed to post a $15,000 bond. This, said Coleman, amounts to false imprisonment,  kidnapping and hostage type activity of a political prisoner and is designed, she adds, to attempt to silence free speech on pertinent issues of public concern, like judicial corruption. 

 

Weigand then set trial for July 20 without jurisdiction, an arraignment, any pleas in the case and no discovery where Middleburg Hts Prosecutor Peter Hull has refused to comply with previous discovery request by Miles on Coleman's behalf. And after having illegal exparte conversations with Weingand, 68, he told the visiting judge in front of community activists at a hearing June 30 with Coleman standing in handcuffs that Black people do not have a right to jury trials in the Berea Municipal Court. 

 

Coleman is out on bail relative to Middleburg Hts  case that is illegally still pending in the Berea Municipal Court but says she has been repeatedly threatened to be quiet about the Civil Rights violations, the Imperial Ave. Murders, and to stop pushing for House Bill 216, a bill proposed two months ago by State Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat. That proposed legislation, now in committee, requires that Ohio trial court judges are assigned at random rather than handpicked from the Ohio Supreme Court level, and all the way down to the Cleveland Municipal Court, to fix cases, often to the detriment of the community, the Black community in particular, since Blacks are disproportionately prosecuted in Ohio.

 

"Retired Judge Michael Weigand was assigned to the case for the sole purpose of harassing me and disregarding the law because he is a retired judge from Barberton, Oh. with nothing to lose where I cannot even file a bar complaint because he is not a sitting judge." said Coleman. "This is why House Bill 216 as to the random assignment of judges to cases is so  important and case fixing and harassment of innocent Ohioans via the handpicking of Ohio trial court judges has been going on for years, according to the investigation that I began in 2007 for the Call and Post Newspaper before I started the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com." 

 

Coleman said that Pace can be reached at 216-443-6000 at the county sheriff's office if either the media or the Cleveland FBI want to inquire if he arrested her in 2008 and did not file a complaint accusing her of allegedly resisting his arrest, or even to testify at trial as required via the confrontation clause of the Sixth Amendment. She says that Sheriff Reid is harassing her too, allegedly for others and due to a mortgage fraud investigation that she initiated in the office of county prosecutor Bill Mason that includes evidence of mortgage fraud by Judge O'Donnell and others.

 

Journalist and Community Activist Kathy Wray Coleman can be reached at 216-932-3114 and ktcoleman8 [at] aol [dot] com.