CLEVELAND, OH – Attorney Heather McCollough exposed an unconstitutional tactic she has been using to protect rights-violating East Cleveland police and prosecutors during an attempt to “negotiate” a dismissal of the false criminal charges indicted Mayor Brandon King filed against me and council president Lateek Shabazz on November 15, 2023. On April 4, 2025, McCollough and attorney Timothy Kucharski wanted me to sign a “malicious prosecution waiver” to obstruct my pursuit of criminal charges against them for their “color of law” violation of my constitutional rights.
I was seated next to interim East Cleveland Mayor Sandra Morgan when Kucharski presented the criminal tool to me and demanded that I sign it under the threat that he was going to trial. Kucharski’s coercion was futile since I had served as the city’s mayor from 2006-2009 and had banned the unconstitutional tactic at the beginning of my administration. Clerk of Council Mansell Baker and council’s attorney and mine, Kenneth Myers, were witnesses.
As a journalist and newspaper publisher, I had uncovered and exposed before my election in 2005 how East Cleveland police and prosecutors conspired to conceal their “color of law” violations of rights by criminally charging their victims. In exchange for a dismissal, the twice-abused citizen had to agree to sign away their constitutional and lawful rights to pursue civil and criminal complaints against them. It was sickening that city prosecutors were conspiring with police to protect them from criminal prosecution instead of prosecuting them for their violations of rights and laws.
Upon taking an oath of office to discharge my duties as mayor, the city’s chief law enforcement officer, my law director and I, the late attorney Almeta Johnson, prohibited the practice as a prosecutorial tactic. My former deputy law director, Ellaina Lewis-Bevels, introduced a “probable cause determination” form to evaluate the lawfulness of each arrest. If the police officer’s report wasn’t supported with their own written statement in support of probable cause, the prosecution did not proceed.
A police officer or prosecutor who violated constitutional rights and laws was a criminal. That’s the standard we established for policing and prosecutions in East Cleveland between 2006 and 2009. When I saw the illegal “hand-written” language that had been added to the typed document Kucharski passed to me, I exploded. Both Myers and I said I was not signing what amounted to McCollough and Kucharski’s admission that the criminal charges King filed were false and their prosecution of them was malicious. I told them each I was not waiving any rights to pursue civil or criminal claims against each attorney.
I told Morgan that King’s personal prosecutors were using an unconstitutional tactic I had banned, and that it explained why McCollough didn’t charge the 24 police who were investigated, indicted, prosecuted and convicted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney Michael O’Malley. Not only was I NOT signing the document Kucharski handed to me, I said I would transmit it to the FBI and county prosecutor as evidence of a pattern and practice of violations of Title 18 United States Code, Sections 241, “conspiracy against rights, and 242, “deprivation of rights under color of law.”
The two federal laws were cited by former Assistant U.S. Attorney General Vanita Gupta at the conclusion of the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigations of the Cleveland police killings of Timothy Russell and Malissa Williams in East Cleveland, and the late East Cleveland councilwoman Mildred Brewer’s great-grandson, Tamir Rice, at a Cleveland playground. Prosecutors and judges were warned that the two federal laws were applicable to them as well as police officers. Retired Supreme Court of Ohio Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor emailed the USDOJ letter to the state’s 722 judges.
18 U.S.C. 241 and 242 were enhanced during the administration of former President Bill Clinton as part of the 1994 Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Control Act. Activists focused on the “super predator” features of the bill while ignoring the “law enforcement control” portions of the controversial federal law.
The penalties for police, prosecutor and judicial color of law conspiracies against, and deprivation of the rights of persons, were increased from six months in prison to 10 years and the death penalty if the rights-violating actions of police, prosecutors and judges led to a person’s death. 18 U.S.C. 242 prohibits governments from dismissing false criminal charges and demanding that a person not apply for a job at the place whose officials falsely charged them.
Morgan had instructed Kucharski and McCollough to dismiss the false criminal charges. Kucharski was a private attorney King had retained to prosecute his criminal complaint. He had been administered no oath of office to discharge the prosecutor’s duties by King, Judge William Dawson or visiting Judge Harry Fields.
As I had discharged the duties of the clerk of council to receive oaths from oath sworn officials, Kucharski had filed no oath of office with me as required by law. Without an oath of office filed with the Clerk of Council in 10 days, Kucharski refused and vacated the office with his failure to take an oath of office.
Council had also moved to void Kucharski’s contract on June 28, 2024. There were also no funds budgeted for outside attorneys in both the 2023 and 2024 appropriations ordinances. Section 75 of East Cleveland’s charter gave council exclusive authority to void any contract that was entered to the personal benefit of an elected or appointed official.
Kucharski was clearly operating, exclusively, as King’s personal prosecuting attorney when council voided his contract on June 28, 2024. He prosecuted only King’s complaint against me. He failed to comply with Cuyahoga County Prosecutor O’Malley’s office’s instructions to appoint a special prosecutor to conduct an investigation to determine if the charges against Shabazz and I were substantiated.
I was being criminally prosecuted for removing an illegal council meeting notice King had created and posted instead of scheduling the meeting through me. King’s “council meeting” agenda criminally identified the “mayor” as the presiding officer of the special council meeting he wanted.
Legislation he was sharing with the public included temporary numbers I had not assigned permanent numbers, and the names of private citizens Nathaniel Martin and Mark McClain as members of council. Though Korean Stevenson had been replaced as council’s president on March 6, 2023, King’s agenda and legislation identified her as the president in November and December 2023, long after she had been replaced by Juanita Gowdy.
Mayors, under East Cleveland’s charter, do not supervise any of the affairs of council that King’s agenda creation and notice posting obstructed. Shabazz was being prosecuted for allegedly watching me remove the notice. Fields rejected their evidence. Morgan saw through King’s entire politically punitive scheme.
I filed a criminal complaint against King, Hemmons and McCollough that the two attorneys said they removed from the file Dawson intended for the special prosecutor and visiting judge. Neither Fields nor Kucharski investigated my complaint and defense when they learned of it.
Kucharski ignored the investigative instructions coming from O’Malley’s office and focused only on honoring his personal prosecutor’s contract with King. In his stupid mind there was no separation between the branches of government, and Section 113(A) of the charter didn’t matter.
Kucharski’s ridiculous argument was that King could supervise the affairs of council and chair its meetings as mayor. It obliterated every law, ordinance and administrative rule of council that said otherwise. It was interesting interacting with an attorney who uses every devious scheme to defend known criminals, switch roles and become a paid prosecutor and try to justify prosecuting me for removing a piece of paper.
After council voided his unlawful contract with King on June 28, 2024, one that had not been approved by council or funded in the 2024 appropriations ordinance, Kucharski had no authority to continue the prosecutions and should not have submitted any invoices or received continued payments from the city. When he appeared before Fields on April 4, 2024, Kucharski was impersonating a vendor and a special prosecutor 280 days after his contract was voided.
Kucharski should have visited the city’s finance window and written a check for the funds he’d received to work as King’s personal prosecutor. Council’s motion voiding his contract ordered the director of finance to recover the funds that had been paid to Kucharski. He owed the city money when he entered city hall on April 4, 2025.
Kucharski seemed to rely on McCollough’s “word” that he could disregard an order of council to void the contract of a vendor hired by an indicted mayor for his personal use. But Baker warned him that he would file a motion to enforce council’s authority to execute Section 75 of the charter with Dawson, who would have no choice but to rule on its enforceability under the charter.
Kucharski’s receipt of his initial $10,000 retainer was a theft of public funds. Even when he called himself reading his “malicious prosecution waiver” to Morgan, Kucharski had not disclosed all the relevant facts to his new client. It was shared, but not yet confirmed, that King paid Kucharski $31,000 for three court appearances.
Morgan’s dismissal of corrupt attorney and law director impersonator Willa Mae Hemmons on March 31, 2025, seemed not to register in the thick-headed Kucharski’s brain. The new mayor was not ignoring council’s ordinances, resolutions and motions, or the city’s charter as King, Hemmons and McCollough had done. Council wanted King’s false criminal charges against Shabazz and me dismissed, and so did the new mayor. As a vendor he had no choice but to comply.
To Morgan, Kucharski was an offensive reminder of King’s corrupt misuse of public authority and funds. His lingering around city hall and conspiracy with McCollough made Kucharski a foul-minded remnant of King’s corruption as he continued to promote the indicted and suspended mayor’s malicious agenda.
The new mayor, Morgan, says she is fully aware that she walked into an administration whose officers and employees were participants and suspects in a multi-jurisdictional criminal investigation. The offensively insulting and demeaning Kucharski demonstrated a huge lapse of judgement when he relied on Hemmons’ and McCollough’s ignorantly unlawful words instead of laws and disciplinary rules.
Kucharski, whose McCollough-like similarities offended the entire room, seemed not to understand that he lacked the upper-hand in a building where he was seen by responsible officials as an ex-vendor who was criminally impersonating a special prosecutor. His reliance on McCollough was also short-sighted since the city’s legislative history shows her being removed from office on January 26, 2023.
No funds were budgeted to pay or extend benefits to McCollough for the years 2023 and 2024, regardless of the legal hood rat’s personal thoughts on council’s authority. At all times, Kucharski was a recipient of stolen public funds interacting with another recipient of stolen public funds as both criminally impersonated officials of the municipal corporation during an official proceeding.
The company he kept with McCollough and Hemmons, and his failure to cease discharging a special prosecutors’ duties after his contract was voided on June 28, 2024, shattered Kucharski’s credibility. Baker forcefully reminded Kucharski that it was he who was seen as the offender and not the city’s ex-mayor and clerk of council he was maliciously prosecuting for the city’s indicted and suspended mayor.
Instead of signing a dismissal agreement as a “special prosecutor” whose contract was voided 280 days earlier, Kucharski should have recognized he was an oathless, uncontracted, unbudgeted law enforcement officer impersonator engaging in criminal acts and left if he was a law-abiding and ethical attorney.
Kucharski’s signature on a dismissal agreement he, as a private attorney had no legal authority to sign, is evidence of the culmination of multiple criminal acts he committed under the “color of law” with King, Hemmons and McCollough.
