Democratic Berea Municipal Court Judge Mark Comstock

Republican Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor

Former Democratic Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Brown,
now a Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge

Journalist and Community Activist Kathy Wray Coleman
Democratic Cuyahoga County Administrative 
and Presiding Judge Nancy Fuerst

Democratic Cleveland Ward 2 Councilman Zack Reed

Cleveland NAACP President and Call and Post Newspaper General Counsel George Forbes

Democratic Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson

Democratic Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court
Judge John F. Russo

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

The Imperial Women and other activist groups will take a caravan from Cleveland to Berea Municipal Court in Berea , Oh. on Thursday to protest before a scheduled trial of journalist, community activist and Imperial Women leader Kathy Wray Coleman, whom they say is being harassed and maliciously prosecuted around her writings, the Imperial Ave. Murders, and the activists' push for a state law requiring that all Ohio trial court judges are assigned and reassigned to civil, criminal and other cases by random draw.

Cars will leave from in front of the home of Community Activist Willie Stokes at 12010 Larchmere Ave in Cleveland at 8:00 am on Thursday, May 5 to head to the Berea Municipal Court, 11 Berea Commons, for a trial scheduled to begin at 9:30 am before Mary Grace Trimboli, 57, who is neither a retired nor current judge but is illegally posing as the latter in violation of Coleman's statutory rights under state law (O.R.C. 2701.10). She was on the Toledo Municipal Court bench last in 2005 at age 51 and did not seek reelection. The Ohio Constitution, however, only permits retired judges  to be visiting judges on cases to replace sitting judges due to bias or conflict, but state law permits it only on civil and appellate cases and all parties must agree to it.

Trimboli does not qualify in either instance and Coleman says that she is harassing her for exposing her fraud where she posed as a judge relative to the Cleveland City Councilman Zack Reed second DUI case in 2008 when Reed was parked in his car and not even driving and gave him 10 days in jail when he should have been charged by Cleveland city prosecutors with a lessor charge of having physical control of his car and not driving, a charge that does not require jail time as a second DUI does.. 

Reed was represented in that case by Cleveland NAACP President and Call and Post General Counsel George Forbes, whom activists say played the father figure and tricked the outspoken councilman into the 10 days of jail rather than moving to dismiss DUI the charge. And, they say, that he did it to appease Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, who wanted Reed to stop challenging him at City Council meetings. Trimboli was also recruited later that year to preside over the case of Cuyahoga County Juvenile Court Judge Joseph Russo, then the administrative judge in that court, and she gave him probation and forced him to participate in counseling sessions for a mere disorderly conduct conviction, allegedly because political operatives wanted her to target him too. 

Now, the activists claim, she is back, but this time to lead a malicious prosecution against Coleman for her writings on the Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com, her investigations of judicial malfeasance, and Coleman's grassroots leadership, though this time Trimboli may have gone too far in taking on an investigative reporter and may ultimately face criminal charges herself for illegally impersonating a judge. 

Contact persons for the protest at Berea Municipal Court on Thurs. are Imperial Women affiliates Kathy Wray Coleman at 216-932-3114 and Valerie Robinson at 216-321-1677. (Note: Pictures of Trimboli are not on the web because they might expose her age and her illegal actions of impersonating a judge to harass targeted people, activists say). 

"We cannot allow Kathy or anyone else to be harassed, mistreated and maliciously prosecuted for speaking out on issues of public concern that the First Amendment protects them in doing," said Valerie Robinson, a retired Cleveland school teacher and a member of the Imperial Women, a group formed around the unprecedented murders of 11 Black women on Imperial Ave in Cleveland allegedly at the hands of alleged serial killer Anthony Sowell, whose capital murder trial is set for June 6 before Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Dick Ambrose. "We cannot let the establishment harass our leaders that are fighting for justice and the fair treatment of all people because if they get Kathy they can get any of us."

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. Middleburg Hts misdemeanor cases that have a traffic citation attached to them that leave the mayor's court after not guilty pleas are taken, are by statute heard in the Berea Municipal Court. 

"Wayne Kerek, who frequently practices in the Berea Municipal Court, was given a ride home and I was taken to the police station, harassed, and then released after they took what money I had as bond," said Coleman. "I am to go to trial on Thurs. before Ms. Trimboli who is not a judge and my lawyer Lawrence Sheehe withdrew Friday after appearing in the case on Thurs saying Trimboli was harassing him without an arraignment for his client, and time to prepare, do discovery, and to move to dismiss the case since it was to be filed in the mayor's court and is thus not properly before the Berea Municipal Court.

Coleman went on to brand her mistreatment "pure racism, sexism, retaliation and corruption by a woman posing as a judge who might be unbalanced."

Coleman said that Berea Municipal Court Judge Mark Comstock snatched the case before it could go to the mayor's court because Middleburg Hts Mayor Gary Starr is friends with 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, she says, 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 so that he could then go allegedly murder the last six of the 11 Black women. 

According to Coleman, when she moved to dismiss the case before Comstock for a lack of jurisdiction because the 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, though State Rep. Bill Patmon (D-10), a Cleveland Democrat, is to introduce a bill this week pushed by the Imperial Women for Ohio trial court judges to be sitting judges assigned and reassigned to cases at all times by random draw.

"We will continue to allow the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court to pick judges and I am going to get off this case so that one can be picked," said Comstock, the day last summer that he hauled her in handcuffs and a jail jumpsuit that he directed police to stop by the jail to have her put on. He then withdrew and had then Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Brown assign Trimboli of Toledo, Oh to the case, though she is not a current or a retired judge, which is what Coleman says her group hopes to stop by pushing Patmon's upcoming bill for a state law requiring that all of Ohio's trial court judges are elected judges assigned and reassigned to cases by random draw at all times. And though they often are, it is either when judges recuse themselves or affidavits of prejudice are granted due to bias or conflict that the handpicking usually begins by either the Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court, the presiding judges of Ohio's Court of Common Pleas, where felonies and civil and other matters are heard, and at other county courts of Ohio such as juvenile, probate and domestic relations courts. 

Coleman says that Brown, who is now a Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge in Columbus, Oh. via an appointment by former Democratic Governor Ted Strickland, who had also appointed him as Chief Justice, had no authority to handpick Trimboli to the case because she is not a retired judge and even if she were, state law only permits visiting judges in criminal cases with the consent of the parties. Hence, says Coleman, she is going over the edge and harassing her because she objected via the filing of an affidavit of prejudice.

Brown was appointed last May to replace Chief Justice Thomas Moyer, who died unexpectedly in April, but lost by an embarrassing 68 percent of the vote in Nov. to now Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor.And after he appointed Trimboli Coleman sought her removal from the case, as she had done previously with Comstock. But Cuyahoga County Presiding Judge Nancy Fuerst, who by state law hears affidavits of prejudice filed against municipal court judges of Cuyahoga County, denied an affidavit of prejudice against Comstock and the meritorious one that she filed against non-judge Trimboli to seek a replacement judge.

Coleman said that Trimboli is going to far and says that she is in essence a traveling henchwoman who goes from city to city to harass Black activists and politicians like Reed and Russo and with nothing to lose because she is not a judge and a complaint with the bar cannot even be filed against her. Fuerst, says Coleman, is part of the problem, and like Trimboli, is violating the law to perpetuate malfeasance against Blacks and outspoken community persons that big shots like Jackson want destroyed. 

"I believe that this potentially unbalanced woman [Trimboli] should be prosecuted for impersonating a judge," said Coleman "And Berea Judge Mark Comstock, who is just as bad, should be indicted by a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury for falsifying a public record with his fraudulent case docket entries of a plea, an arraignment, and a pretrial.”

Nearly a week after Fuerst denied the affidavit of prejudice on its face, Trimboli scheduled a trial with no jurisdiction and no arraignment, pretrial or discovery, and though Coleman had no attorney. She then ordered Coleman to put up a $6,000 bond that Coleman ultimately posted with the help of her father, Dr. James M. Coleman, disregarding the court bond schedule that Coleman says is followed with respect to her White counterparts, though she says nobody Black or White has been harassed like she has, she believes.

Strongsville Attorney Lawrence Sheehe entered an appearance for the journalist on April 29, 2011 but quit the same day saying Trimboli was harassing him and Coleman by presiding when she has no jurisdiction where the case was to be in the mayor's court He also accuses Trimboli of denying Coleman an arraignment to be apprised of her constitutional and statutory rights, and of giving him four days to seek a jury trial, discovery, and to confer with his client. All this, he says, is geared towards compromising Coleman's constitutional right to a fair trial, one that cannot proceed since case law requires dismissal because the case did not originate in the Middleburg Hts. Mayor's Court as required by city ordinance.

"Attorney Sheehe let me know that I as a Black woman am not worth him falling out with the White people in Berea and Middleburg Hts where there are no Blacks even on the Middleburg Hts police force where the Cleveland NAACP says that police are harassing young Black men that ride through that city," said Coleman. "He thought he could do me in and then got afraid after I said I would file a bar complaint if he participated in obvious corruption by Judge Comstock, Ms. Trimboli and corrupt and racist Middleburg Hts Prosecutor Peter Hull, all of whom have been reported to the Civil Rights division of the Cleveland FBI."

Coleman said that questions have been repeatedly raised as to whether Trimboli is competent to pose illegally as a judge on any bench in the state of Ohio, given her harassment of Blacks and women, and her complete disregard of the U.S. Constitution, the Ohio Rules of Criminal Procedure, the Ohio Rules of Evidence, the local rules of the Berea Municipal Court and the Middleburg Hts Mayor's Court, relevant case law, and other authorities.

Coleman said that Trimboli and Comstock have also discarded documents seeking a jury trial so that Trimboli can allegedly hear and fix the case for Jackson, Comstock, the prosecution and the judges that want to continue to allegedly fix cases, though data show that Blacks are prosecuted in a disproportionate fashion in municipal, common pleas and other courts in Cuyahoga County, meaning that they are the more targeted group by design.

“Ms. Trimboli was recruited all the way from Toledo, Oh. to violate the law and to fix the case against me and since she was assigned by former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Brown, whom voters hate so much that he only got 38 percent of the vote as to his lost last year to now Chief Justice O'Connor, she believes that she can ignore the law to harass Blacks," said Coleman. "And we believe that that brings her fitness for the bench into question, not to mention her obvious violation of the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment since I am Black, female, over 40, and a member of a protected class.”