EAST CLEVELAND, OH – Indicted East Cleveland Mayor Brandon King cried indigent to be assigned his court appointed counsel, Charles Tyler, Sr., after his personal attorney, Willa Mae Hemmons, could not justify her fake “legal opinion” that he could “indemnify” himself and use public funds to cover his legal expenses. Hemmons has been impersonating East Cleveland’s “director of law” and writing legal opinions to help King keep stealing public funds since before council vacated and defunded the law director’s office last January 26, 2023. It seems illogical for King to go from drinking $400 a bottle 18-year-old Macallen Scotch whiskey to indigent a year after he was caught drinking it and smoking pricey cigars in the police garage.
King’s indigent status raises questions because his $65,000 annual salary exceeds poverty guidelines for a married man with an adult child. The annual Financial Disclosure Statement King filed with the Ohio Ethics Commission (OEC) and signed shows he has 21 sources of income and 17 stock holdings, including 4 brokerage accounts. That’s 38 earning sources in addition to his salary.
King’s OEC filing reveals he co-owns a 4-suite apartment rowhouse where he collects $1200 a month in rent from one tenant. He also co-owns a commercial office building where he’s charging the city over $22,000 annually to lease two offices.
There are 13 properties in the name of entities King or his brothers own on Elsinore Street alone where King claims to reside. One of the properties is a land bank lot King obtained in the name of the University of East Cleveland. There are several other properties elsewhere throughout the city in the names of his relatives that include a car wash and Jamaican restaurant.
Adding to his property wealth, King’s six-figure Cleveland Clinic nurse practitioner wife, Stephanie McCarroll-King, testified before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections last May 2023 that she paid the rent and all the bills at their Euclid, Ohio home. She identified the mayor’s first cousin, Darryl Gresham, as their landlord.
King and McCarroll married in February 2022, but he’s concealed her presence and earnings from his OEC filings and the Internal Revenue Service, according to tax records he shared with the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in May 2023. King listed the Euclid address where he and his wife reside at 20230 Glen Russ Lane as his residence in 2004 when he registered American Merchandising Services LLC – AMS-05 with the Ohio Secretary of State. It’s the company Cuyahoga County Prosecuting Attorney Michael O’Malley charged him with using to sell the city supplies.
For voting purposes King claims to reside at 1735 Elsinore Street with six bill sharing adult members of his family and his brother, Sheldon’s, girlfriend. Court of Common Pleas Judge Hollie Gallagher’s docket shows she just received undelivered correspondence from the address King claims to reside at that was cited for felony illegal dumping last March 2023. How six adults missed the mayor’s important mail at a 5-bedroom residence he claims to sleep at nightly is a mystery.
King even uses campaign funds to avoid spending his own money. His non-compliant campaign finance reports, as reported by treasurer Nadia Lovelace, include over 40 personal purchases with campaign funds through an Amazon account. King has never met the requirements of Section 3517.10, 3517.11(C) and 3517.11(D) of the Ohio Revised Code regarding the incomplete campaign finance reports he has not filed on time or accurately since becoming a candidate for elected office.
King was granted his indigency request on November 19, 2024 and assigned the attorney, Tyler, who had originally entered an October 16, 2024 appearance on his behalf before the court appointed assignment. Tyler had already requested a Bill of Particulars after King was indicted on October 10, 2024.
Internal questions initially surfaced among some East Cleveland council members as to how Tyler was being paid since he’d been the recipient of at least $54,230 in unbudgeted public funds to represent King, his family and private citizen friends, Nathaniel Martin and Mark McClain, on personal matters since May 2023. None of Tyler’s contracts, or the legal matters he filed against the city’s officials, were budgeted or approved by council. Council didn’t authorize King to hire a private attorney to file complaints against council members and its employees.
To learn if Tyler was on the city payroll again, a request was made to King’s law director impersonator, Hemmons, for invoices, contracts, council approved resolutions and cancelled checks to Tyler. Hemmons refused to answer yes or no, and failed to deliver any records about Tyler’s possible initial and current representation of King.
King appears to have applied for legal assistance as an indigent criminal defendant sometime between his November 8, 2024 arraignment and Judge Gallagher’s November 19, 2024 decision to let Tyler serve as his court appointed counsel. There is no reference to his indigency application on the court’s docket.
The $54,230 the mayor paid to Tyler in misappropriated public funds so engrained the unethical attorney in King’s personal legal battles that he was referenced in a March 12, 2024 criminal complaint Councilman Lateek Shabazz filed with the Cuyahoga County Probate Court. Tyler was referenced as one of the private attorneys receiving misappropriated public funds to represent King and members of his family in a personal voter fraud complaint before the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections in May 2023.
Tyler filed a sanctionable defamation complaint against the Clerk of Council knowing he had represented the mayor personally when he submitted and addressed his first $4050 invoice to King on May 23, 2023. The address Tyler used was 1735 Elsinore Street where King claimed to reside with his adult relatives.
Though King was identified as his client, Tyler was written and received a $4050 check from the City of East Cleveland that was paid from the professional services line item in the Central Services budget. Tyler, as a former assistant Summit County prosecutor, knew he was representing King and his family, personally, when he received his first misappropriated $4050 check from East Cleveland. He also knew from invoiced conversations with Hemmons that she was working with him on King’s behalf against the council she was so supposed to dually serve as the city’s alleged director of law. Tyler seems not to have concerned himself with the conflicts of interests he was helping Hemmons conceal to represent King’s personal interests with public funds.
Tyler received a $10,000 retainer to defend King against the probate court complaint Ward 3 Councilman Lateek Shabazz and residents filed charging him with misfeasance and malfeasance in office on March 12, 2024. The state law Shabazz used to bring the charges required the director of law to prosecute it. Instead, Hemmons entered a March 14, 2024 motion to dismiss with a request for sanctions against council’s attorney on King’s behalf.
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.
Hemmons had originally entered an appearance as the personal attorney of King’s co-defendant, recalled ex-Councilman Ernest Smith and conflicted herself, again, from discharging the law director’s duties. She withdrew so the court could appoint Smith an attorney after she was identified as a witness in their prosecution. If she was discharging the duties of East Cleveland’s director of law, Hemmons should have sought to recover the $6700 King and Smith stole from East Cleveland taxpayers. She never disclosed in writing the conflicts of interests she’s had with her private clients against the city, not even with Smith.
What Hemmons did with King, Smith and others was misuse the legal opinion writing authority of the director of law to ratify a series of illegal and duty exceeding acts King committed with them. Even after the law director’s office was vacated and defunded by council in January 2023, Hemmons continued to falsely hold herself out as the “director of law” for the city of East Cleveland to maintain her unlawful interest in a public contract. Attorneys like Tyler, James Alexander, Brian Bardwell, Tim Kucharski and Don McTigue were used to attack council and its employees with misappropriated and stolen public funds. King and Hemmons sought to win by obstructing the payment of council’s attorney, Kenneth Myers, while paying their own.
Tyler most recently lost a Supreme Court of Ohio mandamus claim to Myers that King paid him to file on behalf of ex-Councilman Nathaniel Martin and private citizen Mark McClain. Tyler took King’s claim to the Supreme Court of Ohio that they were the two members of council he “legally recognized” and paid the $20,000 in annual wages that rightfully belonged to Shabazz and Billings.
The state’s highest court ruled again that King lacked the authority to supervise the affairs of council. For his work on behalf of the two private citizens, Tyler submitted three invoices for a $10,000 retainer, $12,840 and $10,710. None of Tyler’s contracts, invoices and claims in the city’s name were approved by East Cleveland city council.
