CLEVELAND, Ohio -- As Ohio Supreme Court’s chief justice mulls whether to remove Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Pinkey Carr from all traffic and court cases for the time being, another court has already ruled that she must comply with her court’s administrative order to postpone court hearings for defendants who are not in jail to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

The same day that Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor temporarily stripped Carr of her authority to preside over such cases in her courtroom, the 8th District Court of Appeals ordered Carr to abide by the March 13 order by Administrative and Presiding Judge Michelle Earley.

Cuyahoga County Chief Public Defender Mark Stanton and his office triggered both rulings by filing emergency requests in each court seeking to bar Carr from presiding over traffic and criminal cases during the public health emergency.

Earley on Thursday went through and canceled all of the warrants issued in Carr’s courtroom, and the 8th District placed a stay on the warrants until the court fully hears arguments.

Earley, on Friday, March 13, issued an administrative order declaring that criminal cases scheduled for hearings between March 16 and April 3 “are rescheduled 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 court also made similar public statements in a news release and a message posted on its website.

Cleveland.com reported on March 17 that Carr had held hearings that did not follow that order on the previous two days, and issued capiases -- or arrest warrants -- for people who did not show up.

Carr did not respond to requests for comment from cleveland.com before that story ran. She told WJW Channel 8 in an interview the next day the claim that she issued arrest warrants was “absolutely untrue” and that she was holding court hearings solely for those defendants who showed up to court not knowing their hearings were postponed.

“Why would I issue a warrant for someone’s arrest knowing what’s going on as it relates to corona[virus],” Carr said during the interview. “Simply not true.”

Cleveland.com then obtained courtroom video of proceedings Carr held on March 16, 17 and 18 that showed she issued multiple warrants, and placed arrest bonds on several of them.

The video also showed Carr denied Assistant Cuyahoga County Public Defender Mark Jablonski’s request to tell his clients they did not need to come to court because of the court’s administrative order.

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

Carr later mocked Jablonski’s request and called him a “little idiot" after he left her courtroom, the video showed.

Carr did not return cleveland.com’s requests for comment on Saturday. She admitted to WJW Channel 8 that day that warrants had been issued, but she said it was not her intention to issue them.

Carr, who has been a judge for nine years and is also a former law director for the City of Cleveland, said she not know that marking a defendant as “failure to appear” would result in a warrant being filed, the station reported.

“I don’t work in the clerk’s office and didn’t know this would happen,” she said, according to WJW Channel 8.

Carr filed a two-page response with the Ohio Supreme Court on Tuesday. She did not address her public statements regarding the issuance of arrest warrants, but did claim that other judges held similar hearings and issued arrest warrants last week. Court spokesman Ed Ferenc said he was not aware of that occurring.

Carr wrote that she hoped O’Connor would “trust I would never knowingly or purposely subject any member of the public or court employee to this very serious global pandemic."

“My actions in performing my duties as a judge were in the interest of those defendants who stood before me, as well as those who were not before me,” she wrote.

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