The Clark County case filed by the Haitian Bridge Alliance and its president Guerline Jozef requests charges of felony inducing panic, disrupting public services, making false alarms, two counts of complicity, two counts of telecommunications harassment and aggravated menacing.
Those requests for charges reference comments made by Trump and Vance about the Haitian community in Springfield killing and eating residents’ pets. Shortly after those claims were amplified by Trump, Vance and thousands of others online, the community was hit by a wave of bomb and safety threats.
HBA’s complaint to the Ohio Supreme Court alleges the local Municipal Court violated its own rules and gave Trump and Vance special treatment when administrative judge Wilt had the clerk designate a special case number and when she wrote an entry saying that the case “presents an issue of importance and significant public interest.”
The complaint says that Wilt’s ruling to have the case reviewed and decided by all the judges is “totally unauthorized by any law.”
Wilt, Carey and Schumaker ruled on Oct. 4 that particular consideration should be given to “the strong constitutional protections afforded to speech, and political speech in particular.”
“The presidential election is less than 35 days away. The issue of immigration is contentious,” the ruling states. “Due to the proximity of the election, and the contentiousness concerning the immigration policies of both candidates, the Court cannot automatically presume the good faith nature of the affidavits.”
Under Ohio law, a private citizen seeking to “cause an arrest or prosecution” can file an affidavit with “a reviewing official” — a judge, prosecuting attorney or magistrate — to have them review the facts and decide if a complaint should be filed.
The Haitian Bridge Alliance asked the county court to find probable cause for the charges and issue arrest warrants for Trump and Vance.
According to the new complaint, the law allows Ohio courts to have local rules but these rules “may not be inconsistent with any rule governing procedure or practice promulgated by” the Ohio Supreme Court.
“Except for courts of appeals, no Ohio statute or rule of the Ohio Supreme Court allows for assignments to panels of judges,” The Chandra Law Firm, which is representing Jozef and the HBA, said Friday. “There would need to be a rule specifically authorizing assignment to a group of municipal-court judges for such an order to be proper, and no such rule exists.”
“Manufacturing such a process from whole cloth afforded former President Trump and Senator Vance special treatment that no other Ohioan is or would be afforded by a municipal court — with no legal basis,” the complaint alleges.
Cases should be assigned to a specific judge based on the case number’s last digit and those ending in 0 are “assigned equally among the three judges by lot,” according to Municipal Court Rules of Practice.
The rules “narrowly draw the category of ‘special proceedings’ to include ‘civil matters’ like ‘small claims, forcible entry and detainer, default hearings, rent escrow hearings, replevins, garnishment hearings, debtor’s exams,’ ‘citations in contempt,’ and a limited subset of ‘criminal matters,’ including ‘criminal initial appearances, preliminary hearings, and extradition hearings,’” according to the complaint.
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