CLEVELAND, Ohio — Three days before the Ohio Supreme Court temporarily stripped Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey S. Carr of her authority to hold hearings, Carr called an assistant public defender a “little idiot” after he asked whether she would follow an order to postpone proceedings to limit the spread of the novel coronavirus, courtroom video shows.

Assistant Cuyahoga County Public Defender Mark Jablonski stood before Carr on Tuesday after watching the judge order several arrest warrants filed for people free on bond who did not show up to court hearings, even though an order from the court’s chief judge said such hearings would be postponed.

Jablonski asked whether his office could tell its clients who are not in jail that they would not need to come to the courthouse.

“Don’t call people and tell them not to show up,” she said. “If they show up, I’m here.”

Jablonski asked, "in light of the pandemic, there’s no concern?”

“Hi,” she said. “For the third time, I will be here. If people show up, I am here.”

Six minutes after Jablonski thanked Carr and walked out of the room, the judge turned to her courtroom staff and brought up his request again.

“‘I’m gonna call them and tell them don’t come,’” Carr mocked. “I’m sure he is. Little idiot.”

Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor on Friday stripped Carr of her authority to hear any criminal and traffic cases until the justice rules on an emergency motion filed by the county’s public defender seeking to temporarily disqualify her from all such cases.

Carr has until 9 a.m. Tuesday to file her response to the motion. O’Connor will “promptly review the matter and render a written decision,” a copy of the order says.

The two-minute exchange between Carr and Jablonski came during a week in which Carr, in her ninth year on the bench, issued arrest warrants for 33 defendants who failed to show up for hearings, despite an administrative order from Judge Michelle Earley, a news release from the court and a notice posted on the court’s website telling the public that all such court hearings are postponed.

Videos of three days worth of court proceedings obtained by cleveland.com and accompanying court records confirm that Carr issued multiple capiases -- the legal term for an arrest warrant -- and placed arrest bonds on several of them. The videos also include an interview that Carr conducted with a WJW Channel 8 reporter in which Carr said she issued no warrants.

Earley on Thursday canceled nearly all of the warrants that Carr issued throughout the week.

The events in Carr’s courtroom amid a growing pandemic left several attorneys perplexed.

“Judge Carr’s actions put lives in danger and violated the public trust in a time of global crisis,” Marcus Sidoti, a partner at the law firm Friedman and Gilbert, said in a statement to cleveland.com. “We commend Judge Earley’s swift actions in protecting those in the court system, the employees of the Cleveland Municipal Court and their families.”

Ian Friedman, President of Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association, said everyone in the legal profession — including judges — should make the safety of the community a priority.

“We are grateful that our administrative judges have issued orders calling for the processing of essential matters only,” Friedman said.

Carr could not be reached by cleveland.com Saturday for comment on the videos. She and her bailiff did not return calls before Tuesday’s story published. She told WJW Channel 8 that she did not comment for that story because it was untrue.

Stanton, reached by phone Saturday, said it would be inappropriate for him to comment on the pending request.

Carr’s hearings violate administrative order

Earley on Friday, March 13, issued an administrative order declaring that criminal cases scheduled for hearings between March 16 and April 3 “are rescheduled in an effort to prevent community spread of the coronavirus and for the safety of the people who appear before the court and our employees.”

“Those cases are hereby ordered rescheduled for hearing exactly three weeks from the originally scheduled date and time,” the order says.

The order also directs the Clerk of Courts to mail all defendants whose cases were scheduled for those days a summons that “shall order each defendant to appear in accordance with the appropriate docket.”

Video from her courtroom on March 16 shows Carr took the bench and held court as normally scheduled. She had nineteen defendants scheduled for hearings in her courtroom on the 15th floor of the Justice Center.

“I can’t believe you people braved it coming down here," Carr said to the defendants in her courtroom. “Everybody else was scared. We’re not scared.”

Assistant Cuyahoga County Public Defender Linda Gonzalez told Carr that she was scared. Carr told her she could “stay there.”

Monday

Carr went on to issue capias warrants for eight defendants who did not show up to court Monday. This included several cases where she set an arrest bond, a bond that is pre-set by a judge so the defendant does not have to wait to see a judge after their arrest to set a bond. The amounts spanned from $2,500 to $10,000, the video showed.

She sentenced on man to 60 days in jail on a drunken-driving charge. It was his third such conviction in 10 years, meaning he had a mandatory 30-day sentence.

Video shows courthouse staff later talking about the sentence, and Carr defending it by saying he had mandatory time.

“That virus is going to tear through the jail,” one employee who cannot be seen says. “Those are not sanitary conditions.”

Video and court records show that Carr refused to wait when staff inside the jail was late getting an inmate to appear via video on a case where three witnesses had shown up and waited for several hours in her courtroom, and continued the case until the next day. She also set a pretrial for the following Monday.

Tuesday

Carr’s behavior continued on Tuesday. In addition to the exchange with Jablonski, she issued seven warrants for defendants who didn’t appear in her courtroom, and sentenced two defendants to stints in the county jail, according to court records.

She sentenced a 53-year-old charged with misdemeanor theft, who had a history of probation violations, to serve 135 days in jail at a time when officials were scrambling to get people charged with non-violent misdemeanors out of the jail, the video shows.

She then denied a motion from Jablonski to reconsider her sentence in light of the pandemic.

The video also shows Carr joked on the bench that she warned an attorney that his client, who had a history of misdemeanor theft and receiving stolen property cases, had “sticky fingers” and to remove his watch before he met with him. The man’s case is currently pending before her court.

Wednesday

Carr began her Wednesday hearing by blasting cleveland.com’s Tuesday story for failing to point out that “there is a process,” according to the video. She said on the bench that she was simply marking those cases as “failure to appear.”

She told WJW Channel 8 in an interview from her bench that she issued no arrest warrants, and that she was only holding court hearings so people who didn’t watch the news or get notified that their hearings had been canceled could still have their hearings.

Most of those who showed up had their fines and courts costs suspended, she said.

“As far issuing arrest warrants, absolutely untrue,” she said, according to the video.

Video from the court shows that, beginning Wednesday, Carr no longer used the word “capias” when defendants did not show up.

“The person is not here,” Carr said after someone failed to show up. “As I’ve noted all week, corona, day three. You’re all set. Unbelievable.”

Cleveland.com found no instance of Carr noting “corona” on Monday or Tuesday on video or in court filings.

After conducting the interview, Carr issued warrants for 16 people who did not show up to court, the public defender’s office said in its motion to disqualify Carr.

Another assistant public defender, David Magee, asked Carr if he should tell his clients with hearings scheduled for Monday, March 23 that they need to come to court. Carr, who was seen on video denying Jablonski’s similar request the day before, told Magee that “that is on you."

Carr told Magee that she told Jablonski the same thing.

Aftermath

Carr’s actions during those three days this week set off a scramble of lawyers and judges in multiple courthouses.

Earley on Thursday went through and erased nearly all of the warrants Carr issued, and set pre-trial hearings for next month.

Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Administrative and Presiding Judge Brendan Sheehan on Friday granted an emergency petition by Stanton’s office to release from the county jail a woman Carr sentenced March 10 to 51 days in jail before the court’s administrative order was issued. Carr originally sentenced the woman to probation for driving without a license. The woman violated terms of her probation and Carr sent her to jail.

The public defender’s office asked Carr on Tuesday to consider reducing the woman’s sentence. Carr told Jablonski that she could not hear the motion because she did not have the file, and declined to wait in her courtroom for staff to walk to the clerk’s office to retrieve it.

Also on Friday, Stanton’s office in its motion to disqualify Carr said the judge has “demonstrated a calculated bias and disregard for the welfare” for defendants in her courtroom.

“She has placed the lives of our clients in jeopardy as well as the lives of anyone with whom our clients are in contact while in court or after,” Stanton wrote.

Stanton called claims in the WJW story that Carr said she had issued no warrants “false," but pointed out that he could not verify that the judge made them. He said the judge also misled Magee on Wednesday into thinking she had issued no warrants that day.

Stanton, who brought the motion on behalf of two people who have upcoming pre-trial hearings in Carr’s courtroom, said that Carr should be postponing her hearings in accordance with Earley’s administrative order.

“The actions of Judge Carr are continuing to put defendants and their attorneys at risk,” Stanton wrote.

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