Joaquin Hicks homecoming party to be held Wednesday at Black on Black Crime, County Prosecutor Bill Mason under fire by community activists

Joaquin Hicks

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason

Art McKoy

By Kathy Wray Coleman, Editor, Cleveland Urban News.Com and The Kathy Wray Coleman Online News Blog.Com (www.kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com) and (www.clevelandurbannews.com)

(kathy@kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com)

CLEVELAND, Ohio-Members of Black on Black Crime, The Oppressed People's Nation, The Imperial Women, The Cleveland Chapter of the New Black Panther Party, The Carl Stokes Brigade, The Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network, Revolution Books, Stop Targeting Ohio's Poor, The People's Forum and a host of other community activists will hold a homecoming celebration on Wed., March 14, at 7 pm at Black on Black Crime Headquarters, 14660 Euclid Ave in East Cleveland, for Joaquin Hicks and his family. (Black on Black Crime Headquarters is at Euclid Ave. and Lee Rd in McCall's Hotel meeting room)

The event is closed to the media and the contact is Art McKoy at 216-253-4070.

"We thank the community for all of its support and for believing like we have that Joaquin was at all times an innocent man and a victim of a flawed legal system, " said Denise Taylor, Hick's maternal aunt who led the charge with Hicks' attorneys to free him from what community activists say was an excessive, prejudicial, racist and unjust 61-year prison sentence.

Hicks, 31, was charged and later convicted of setting up a robbery that led a Black teen to commit an execution style murder of a White male Cleveland Clinic employee and the wounding of another outside of a downtown Cleveland night club in Feb. 2009 and was freed on Mon. after a state appellate court reversed his convictions and remanded the case for a retrial and he accepted Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason's offer of time served and a plea of aggravated robbery.

Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas Judge Daniel Gaul, who presided at trial in 2010, issued the 61-year prison sentence, one that legal experts have said was excessive since Hicks was not even accused of being the shooter.

Hicks maintains his innocence on all of the charges and said he took the plea deal because he was not going to "continue gambling with my life."

Taylor said that the homecoming party is not to target Mason, though Black on Black Crime founder Art McKoy said that his group and other activist groups intend to hold a press conference later in the week to tell the community how they feel about Mason, and Gaul.

"We invite people to Black on Black Crime to the party that helped us in the community's fight to free Joaquin and we will address the media at a later point on Bill Mason and Judge Gaul," said McKoy.

Taylor said that Hicks' trial attorneys, Edele Passalacqua and John Paris, will likely hold a press conference later this week too.

Gaul later recused himself from the case and was replaced by Common Pleas Court Judge Jose Villaneueva, who approved Mason's plea deal.

Cleveland Clinic employees Jeremy Pechanec, then 28, and Jory Aebly, then 26, where shot in the head, execution style, at an outdoor park plaza across from Schorcher's in Feb. 2009, then a downtown Cleveland night club at the ritzy Reserve Square apartment facility at 12th St and Chester Ave.

Pechanec died later at a hospital and Aebly was critically injured.

Trial testimony revealed that Pechanec and Aebly, both young , White and educated, went outside of the bar and across the street to the plaza to buy marijuana and were robbed by a group of Black men, and eventually shot by Ralfael King, a teenager at the time.

King, 17 at the time but prosecuted as an adult, was sentenced by Gaul to 46 years to life for aggravated murder, attempted murder, aggravated robbery and kidnapping. And Perry King, then 20, a lesser accomplice in the crime, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for driving the getaway car.

Cornelius King, then 26, who pleaded guilty to murder for his actions in the crimes, was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison and Reginald Day, who also pleaded guilty to murder, got 21 years to life.

Day is reportedly a cousin to the three King brothers.

All but Raphael King have since recanted to Gaul in writing, saying that Hicks was not at the scene of the crime and that they had allegedly been manipulated to say otherwise by either police or the county prosecutor's office.

Community activists say the case is laced with racism because Gaul handed out more than a total of 150 years between the five Black men accused of the crime because a White man was killed and another injured in a robbery gone bad involving Black men.

They say that if it were a Black on Black Crime incident, it would have been handled much differently.

"We are not finished with this issue," said McKoy.

Reach Kathy Wray Coleman by email at kathy@kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com and by telephone at 216-932-3114