BEREA, Ohio-Berea Municipal Court Judge Mark Comstock, who is now under investigation for documented impropriety by the Cleveland Plain Dealer Newspaper, is under fire.
Among a host of other allegations, Comstock is accused of recruiting out-of-town retired White visiting judges with nothing to lose to replace him in cases previously before him to harass maliciously prosecuted Blacks and women including triple bonds issued without holding a bond forfeiture hearing and without revoking the first bond as required by state law.
Republican Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor
Cleveland Attorney and Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes
That trend of assigning handpicked retired visiting judges to civil, criminal and other trial court cases in various courts throughout Ohio instead of sitting elected judges that can preside to replace sitting presiding judges that quit cases for bias or other reasons was perpetuated by longtime Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, who died in office on April 2, 2010. Chief judges in common pleas and municipal courts throughout Ohio such as Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Presiding and Administrative Judge Nancy Fuerst and Cleveland Municipal Court Administrative Judge Ron Adrine often follow that lead and are also handpicking judges and assigning them in their courts when a judge in their court quits the case. And this is rather than to reassign cases at random by using computer generated random draw, which is often used to assign cases originally to Ohio judges in multi-judge trial courts such as common pleas and municipal courts like Cleveland's.
The case at issue as to illegal triple bonds and other harassment that involves the Black woman comes at a time when at least 50 Cuyahoga County Democratic Party affiliates, including former county judges Bridget McCafferty and Steven Terry and former county auditor Frank Russo, have either pleaded guilty or been convicted of corruption- related charges in connection with an ongoing public corruption probe initiated by the Cleveland FBI. The woman is being prosecuted by the City of Middleburg Hts, which is a part of Cuyahoga County, and in Berea Municipal Court. Records show that the prosecution was initiated after Middleburg Hts police, for political and other illegal reasons, arrested the Black woman on Oct. 30, 2009 with the help of an attorney named Wayne Kerek, who is Comstock's alleged friend, and allegedly as an unsuccessful tactic to silence free speech and to stop her community activism around The Imperial Ave. Murders, judicial mortgage fraud and case fixing, and otherwise .
Public records reveal that though Kerek was behind the steering wheel of the car with an expired driver's licence, police drove him home to the nearby Strongsville, Oh , arrested the woman, and after allegedly threatening her, issued a bogus traffic citation and charged her maliciously with a second degree misdemeanor crime of obstruction of official business, saying she failed to give her name as a passenger in the car, an outright lie, the Black woman has said. Kerek, records show, was then recruited by Middleburg Hts. Prosecutor Peter Hull, Comstock and the retired out-of-town visiting judge to lie and testify against his own client at the scheduled trial of Oct. 4 of last year that did not take place, and this was even after a visiting judge removed two attorneys from the case saying that because she is a Black woman that they do not like and want to harass, she must represent herself at trial, and regardless of the constitutional mandate for appointed counsel.
The Black woman says she fears for her safety in Berea and that she is being denied her constitutional right to representative counsel with the support of operatives of the Cleveland NAACP so that she can be wrongly convicted, and subsequently jailed.
The Berea Municipal Court is located in Berea , Oh., a suburb of Cleveland that is 20 miles south of the predominantly Black major metropolitan city.
Atlas Bonding, which is owned and operated by John Rocco, who is White, put up a $6 thousand bond on the woman's behalf, after she paid the designated bond fee. Comstock then had a visiting judge come in and issue a warrant against the woman saying she failed to appear for trial in May of last year without a judge assigned to the case at the time and an attorney, after the attorney was deliberately removed by a previous and since recused judge to leave the woman without counsel, though the order of indigent status from the previous recused judge still remains and was not vacated or overturned on appeal.
And without a bond forfeiture hearing legally mandated, the handpicked out-of-town visiting retired judge then ordered the woman to put up 10 percent of a $15 thousand bond after jailing her for a week illegally last July, and that bond was posted by Community Activist Frances Caldwell, even though the $6 thousand bond put up by Atlas Bonding was and still is intact.
Atlas Bonding, via a bail bondsman named Deed Carroll, is accused of taking money from Blacks to place bonds for them in Berea Municipal Court with an agreement that Comstock and visiting judges would then pile on bond after bond with no violation of the provisions of the bond put up by Atlas, and without first revoking it as required by state law.
This malfeasance, public records reveal, is coupled with the issuance of illegal bench warrants, since a bench warrant cannot be issued when a bond is still pending. And Atlas wins because it collects bond fees from charged defendants, mainly Blacks, without having its bonds revoked, and that is because it argues that the defendants have not violated any provision of the bond to Comstock and the visiting judges while simultaneously threatening its clients illegally saying that they did violate bond provisions and must pay for additional bonds issued by the court.
The recruited visiting judge then ordered the Black woman to appear for trial last month without counsel saying Blacks have no constitutional right to counsel even if they are indigent and when she went there and left after being told to represent herself though she is indigent the Court then added a third bond, but this time for $10 percent of $50 thousand. It then ordered Caldwell to Court on Nov. 9 to explain why it should not revoke the 10 percent of the $15 thousand bond that she put up for the woman though leaving intact the $6 thousand bond put up by Atlas bonding before Caldwell put her bond money up, allegedly because Caldwell is Black.
"Why would you revoke the bond I put up and not the bond that was put up by a rich White company of Atlas Bonding,? Caldwell asked Visiting Retired Judge Michael Weigand of Barberton Oh., the judge brought in to Berea Municipal Court after Comstrock quit the case following his harassment of the Black woman, and a retired judge whom community activists say may have a touch of dementia, according to his behavior. "And why," added Caldwell, "would you keep issuing bond upon bond without the required hearing and without revoking a previous bond as required by law and keep issuing warrants against Blacks that have bonds still pending after removing appointed counsel and trying to force them to trial without an attorney?"
Indigent defendants facing felony charges have a constitutional right to appointed counsel under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and a right to counsel if facing prison per the Ohio Rules of Criminal Procedure. And indigent people charged with serious misdemeanor crimes have that right per the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure.
First degree misdemeanors in Ohio call for up to six months in jail and or a fine, and a second degree misdemeanor is a possible 90 days in jail and or a fine. In Ohio municipal courts hear civil, traffic and misdemeanor cases, and common pleas courts hear civil cases and felonies with possibly an attached misdemeanor. Ohio mayor's courts like Middleburg Hts where the community has no court have jurisdiction to hear traffic and misdemeanor cases, though Comstock often steals Middleburg Hts cases to put on his docket in Berea Municipal Court to harass Blacks and others he is charged with targeting for political and other reasons for the Republican dominated Ohio Supreme Court and others.
Comstock, through Weingand, who was handpicked by Justice O'Connor as a visiting retired judge allegedly sent in to harass the Black woman with nothing to lose, then revoked Caldwell's 10 percent of a $15 thousand bond but left Atlas Bonding's $6 thousand bond intact. He then reaffirmed the additional $50 thousand bond that has not yet been put up that he issued before the Nov 9 hearing without revoking the bond put up by Atlas bonding, which is illegal since the woman has a bond pending of $6 thousand that has not yet been revoked.
And even more alarming and what community activists say is the height of corruption, malfeasance and racism is that neither the Berea Municipal Court , Weigand, nor Comstock has authority or jurisdiction to hear the case because by both state law and city ordinance the case was to originate in the Middleburg Hts Mayor's Court since the city police there illegally arrested the Black woman. But data show that instead of dismissing the case, as legally required due to a lack of jurisdiction, Comstock, Weigand and Justice O'Connor have tried to break the woman with illegal bonds and the denial of her constitutional right as an indigent Black defendant to representative counsel in a criminal proceeding where jail is possible.
And a jail sentence in the case might be imminent, though the woman says she is innocent, because Comstock, by his personally instituted Local Rule of the Berea Municipal Court, picks the jury pools, and at his own pleasure. And picking a jury pool is commensurate to fixing a case, community activists say.
After the Nov 9, 2011 hearing, said Caldwell, Weigand removed his robe and then came chasing her outside of the courtroom in the parking lot, trying unsuccessfully to explain his harassment of the Black woman and others, but according to Caldwell, the retired out-of-town handpicked visiting White judge had no legitimate explanation. She said that she is considering suit relative to the matter.
Witnesses to the incident include Community Activists Willie Stokes and Valerie and Stewart Robinson.
Comstock and Weigand were allegedly afraid to revoke the $6 thousand put up by Rocco after he hired an attorney saying he dared them to revoke the bond put up by Atlas Bonding after denying the Black woman and other indigent Black defendants their constitutional right to representative counsel in criminal proceedings of serious offenses.
Other community activists say Comstock should be prosecuted and jailed.
"Retired Visiting Former Judge Michael Weigand was chosen from out of the county to harass and to fix the case because he has nothing to lose and he needs a mental competency exam, I believe, and Judge Mark Comstock is a piece of scum who flagrantly tramples upon the constitutional and statutory rights of Blacks and others with the sanctioning of people like sellout Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes," said Kathy Wray Coleman, Leader of The Imperial Women. "We again call for a comprehensive FBI probe for obvious theft of bond monies and violations of the Civil Rights of Black defendants in the Berea Municipal Court and for Corrupt Judge Comstock to be prosecuted and jailed if found guilty of crimes in office by a jury of his peers."
Coleman says that community activists urge Blacks and others not to patronize Atlas Bonding and call for an investigation of the agency by the Ohio Department of Insurance because it has also done other activity such as falsifying bond papers via bail bondsman Michael Winlock to try to have Blacks prosecuted illegally in the Lyndhurst Municipal Court.
Comstock is also under scrutiny for violating the law and requiring defendants to pay court costs when cases have been dismissed pursuant to a recent ruling from Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose, who has ordered the Berea Municipal Court to pay back monies from 1995.
Coleman said that operatives at the Ohio Supreme Court are angry with select Blacks and others over House Bill 216, pending proposed state legislation that is now in committee and was pushed by The Imperial Women and introduced by state Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat. HB 216 requires that judges in multi-judge trial courts in Ohio are always assigned by random draw rather than handpicked .
The Ohio Supreme Court and chief judges in common pleas and other courts in Ohio, says Coleman, want to handpick judges sometimes to fix cases such as big money asbestos cases and also to target political enemies and outspoken judges, attorneys, journalists and community activists. She said that retired visiting judges are often sent in to Cuyahoga County by the Ohio Supreme Court to target Democrats and others, and to fix cases.
Coleman said that she lobbied with Democrats, Black leaders and others against Issue 1, a proposed constitutional amendment that would have increased the mandatory age for Ohio judges to retire from 70 to 75 and that O'Connor, Comstock and others are still angry because Issue 1 failed at the ballot box last year.
Coleman believes that in retaliation for losing Issue 1 and the potential implications of HB 216, that if passed by the state legislature would by law preclude handpicking trial court judges to sometimes manipulated case outcomes, Justice O'Connor, Comstock and others have set out to retaliate against those that they are in a position to harass. And the victims of such harassment, says Coleman, include political enemies of O'Connor, Comstock and others, Ohio attorneys, and community activists such as the Black woman malicious prosecuted in the Berea Municipal Court who fights against racism, sexism, judicial malfeasance, and other issues of public concern.