CLEVELAND, OH – Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Hollie Gallagher issued a November 26, 2024 nunc pro tunc order correcting a docket that shows Akron attorney Charles Tyler being assigned to Brandon King as his court-appointed counsel on November 19, 2024. The docket read on that day how King was declared “indigent.”
The docket now reads that King, the Defendant, retained Tyler. His status as an indigent was removed. King has still not responded to a public records request for any recent contracts he’s entered and paid Tyler for legal representation.
Since May 2023 Tyler’s received $54,230 in misappropriated public funds to represent King, members of his family and his private citizen friends. Tyler’s legal work on behalf of the King family was referenced in a March 12, 2024 misfeasance and malfeasance in office complaint Council President Lateek Shabazz filed against the mayor in the Cuyahoga County Probate Court.
Tyler filed a frivolous defamation complaint against the Clerk of Council, former Council President Twon Billings and the Council seeking to clear his name. In interrogatories he wanted the Clerk of Council, this writer, to admit that claims of his being paid to represent the King family were untrue. Tyler must not have remembered the invoices he sent to King’s alleged residential address and the notice of appearance he filed with the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections on behalf of the King family on May 18, 2023. The court dismissed his claim and he was forced to defend himself against a request for sanctions.
On November 21, 2024 the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled against Nathaniel Martin and Mark McClain, and denied their quo warranto and mandamus claims against Shabazz and Councilor Twon Billings. King paid Tyler more than $23,000 to represent the two private citizens against two council members he criminally obstructed from being paid to discharge the duties of their elected offices. King and his other personal attorney, Willa Mae Hemmons, even created fraudulent legislation with the names of his “legally recognized” council members that was rejected by outside agencies. The case and opinion is captioned State ex rel. Martin v. Shabazz, Slip Opinion No. 2024-Ohio-5450. Tyler ignored all the published warnings he’d received to keep the flow of $10,000 retainers King was paying him in stolen public funds. Hemmons can be seen in the background of the feature photograph of this story speaking to a bailiff at the door wearing a grey suit and her curly red wig.
In the legal matters he’s been paid in public funds to file or defend for King, Tyler has lost all but one. He helped King sell his lie before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in May 2023 that he was a part-time husband who lived with his new wife on the weekends in Euclid. Monday through Thursday, Tyler argued that King was residing at 1735 Elsinore Street in East Cleveland with six other adults that included his mother, wife, three brothers and a brother’s girlfriend in a 5-bedroom, one bathroom apartment police have raided twice for drugs.
The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections cancelled the voter registrations of King’s mother and two of his three brothers. King’s weekend wife, Stephanie McCarroll-King, voluntarily cancelled her own voter registration at the East Cleveland address and registered in Euclid where she lived. She admitted to having not ever resided in the twice raided dope house. King’s mother, a Jamaican immigrant, ended up being referred to the Ohio Secretary of State’s voter integrity unit for a possible criminal investigation. She voted 47 times in federal, state and local elections from East Cleveland between 1990 and 2023 as a Richmond Heights resident and non-citizen.
Tyler is a former Summit County assistant prosecutor who knew or should have known he was helping King commit felony theft and voting fraud crimes in office with the stolen public funds he was paid. King has paid him more than $54,230 in misappropriated public funds to lose every claim he’s filed on King’s behalf, for his family and for private citizens to criminally obstruct or harass city council and its employees from discharging official duties.
Councilman Lateek Shabazz and residents filed a misfeasance and malfeasance in office complaint against King on March 12, 2024. The state law Shabazz used to bring the charges required the director of law to prosecute it. Instead, Hemmons entered an appearance in King’s defense and filed a March 14, 2024 motion to dismiss with a request for sanctions against council’s attorney.
Tyler was substituted as King’s counsel on March 26, 2024 and he was retained with a $10,000 check on March 29, 2024. On April 3, 2024 Judge Laura Gallagher issued a notice of a May 24, 2024 hearing. The complaint was dismissed on April 22, 2024 before Tyler could generate an itemized invoice showing $10,000 worth of billable hours at $300 an hour. King paid him $10,000 in public funds for nothing. The unspent funds should have been refunded to the city.
The $54,230 paid to Tyler should have been contributed to the city’s $100,000 monthly payments to Charles Hunt and the late Marilyn Conard’s estate. Tyler’s receipt of unbudgeted funds the council considers to have been stolen motivates his mischaracterization of the charges against King as being politically motivated instead of theft. It explains his false belief that he can appeal to the Supreme Court of Ohio after the Supreme Court of Ohio suspends King from office.
Tyler’s already engaged in indictable and sanctionable misconduct with King for receiving misappropriated public funds to represent him, his family and private citizen friends personally. Instead of defending King, Tyler could be called like Hemmons as a witness to his crimes and a beneficiary of his theft in office.
