By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Lame duck Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason (pictured), who did not seek reelection this year and will likely be replaced with former rogue judge Tim McGinty, who won the March Democratic primary for county prosecutor, last week filed an affidavit of prejudice with Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor (pictured second) against Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Presiding and Administrative Judge Nancy Fuerst (pictured third), seeking to remove her after she assigned a special prosecutor to investigate a perjury case.

That case came about after Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Donnelly in Feb. acquitted a man charged with rape after the alleged victim's  mother allegedly lied in her testimony.

The mother is now facing possible perjury charges.

Fuerst, as the court's administrative judge, followed Donnelly's lead and assigned a special prosecutor in place of Mason's office to investigate the perjury matter, activity that did not sit well with Mason , who has recently been on the ins and outs with the judges as a whole.

Under state law an affidavit of prejudice is the only means in which to involuntarily remove a prejudiced Ohio trial court judge in good standing from a case where if it is against an Ohio common pleas court judge like Fuerst, who hears felony  and civil cases in which damages sought exceed $15 thousand, among other matters, the Ohio Supreme Court chief justice decides.

But  if the prejudice or conflict affidavit is filed against a municipal judge, that hears misdemeanor and traffic  cases, and civil cases with  damages sought of $15 thousand or less,  the presiding judge of the common pleas court in the county, which in Cuyahoga is Nancy Fuerst, makes the decision.

And data show that Fuerst usually denies affidavits of prejudice filed against municipal court judges of Cuyahoga County, even if they have merit .

O'Connor, likewise, appears no less unethical as data show that she sends visiting retired judges throughout the state to allegedly harass certain Blacks, community activists and her enemies with malicious criminal prosecutions after corrupt elected judges like Mark Comstock of the Berea Municipal Court harass them and then run  and get off the case.

In a particular case of notice, Comstock even wrote O'Connor and urged her to harass a Black subject to a malicious prosecution in Berea Municipal Court when it has no jurisdiction and was to originate by state law and city ordinance in the Middleburg Hts Mayor's Court. And because O'Connor is pushing the illegal activity, allegedly out of anger over a bill in the state legislature pushed by Cleveland area community activists that calls for Ohio trial judges assigned and reassigned to cases at random at all times,  court officials and prosecutors forced to participate are afraid not to further the corruption, data show.

Since Fuerst  usually refuses to remove a retired visiting judge in municipal courts in Cuyahoga County like Berea that is prejudice and has been handpicked by O'Connor to come to Cuyahoga County to fix cases against Democrats and people she has targeted for others and herself , it is unlikely that the chief justice will deem Mason's affidavit of prejudice against Fuerst as having any merit, even if it does.

Whether a determination in Mason's favor by O'Connor on the affidavit of prejudice can reverse Fuerst's assignment of a special prosecutor in the perjury investigation is unclear, though case law has said that a judge's ruling cannot necessarily be reversed by a subsequent judge and must be determined by way of an appeal to a higher court, which in this instance would be the Ohio Eighth District Court of Appeals of Cuyahoga County.

What is interesting is that Mason usually represents common pleas judges in the county subject to the filing of an affidavit of prejudice, even in a conflict  such  as McGinty, whom he prosecuted cases  before and represented as to a prejudice affidavit denied before former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, a Republican who died  while in office two years ago at the age of 70 and who by law could not seek reelection.

Moyer also had his handpicked retired judges to disperse throughout the state to allegedly  target his enemies in both criminal and civil cases, including outspoken female attorneys,  and O'Connor, a former lieutenant governor and regular justice on the state's high court who campaigned for chief justice under the guise of judicial reform, picked up where he left off, data show.

McGinty is the Democratic nominee for county prosecutor this year.

He will face independent Ed Wade, who is Black and a seasoned defense attorney, in November.

Research data compiled pursuant to a study commissioned by the Cleveland NAACP, that former Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes and other officials of the local Civil Rights organization repeatedly ignored, show that the 34 predominantly White judges of the general division of the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas  that elect Fuerst to lead and protect them as much as possible, routinely hand harsher sentences to Blacks for the same crimes and similar criminal backgrounds, if any, as Whites that come before them.

Cuyahoga County is Ohio's largest county and a Democratic stronghold. It includes the majority Black major metropolitan city of Cleveland and is roughly 30 percent Black.

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