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| The Honorable Judges Conahan and Ciavarella |
In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers. For years, the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre operated like a conveyor belt: Youngsters were brought before judges without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.
“I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,” said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which is representing hundreds of youths sentenced in Wilkes-Barre.
Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward. Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it. Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.
The judges are scheduled to plead guilty to fraud Thursday in federal court. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years behind bars. Ciavarella, 58, who presided over Luzerne County’s juvenile court for 12 years, acknowledged last week in a letter to his former colleagues, “I have disgraced my judgeship. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame.” Ciavarella, though, has denied he got kickbacks for sending youths to prison.
Conahan, 56, has remained silent about the case.
Invest wisely, invest in private Correctional Systems Inc…
Hope that they throw the book at these “judges’ and put them in the general population
Here in the North West Territories we had a somewhat similar case of a judge who threatened young girls on the street and then was in shock when he was sentenced
Serves him right
Society entrusts you
Wonder how these villains sleep at night
Lock them up for 10 years and confiscate ALL of their worldly possessions to pay for a free donkey ride with cellmate Bubba.
This is what prison is for, not for pot smoking Olympic swimmers that conservatives are belly aching about.
Dad was given the option of either a term in “correctional” or to fight in WWII. He took the wrong option and spent six years in the North Sea in a minesweeper.
Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I keep hearing there are checks and balances, but only if you have money.
The golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules!!
How shameful theses kids lives were flushed down the toilet so the judge could put in a swimming pool and keep his mistress in a nice apartment.
# 2 Dallas said, “Lock them up for 10 years and confiscate ALL of their worldly possessions to pay for a free donkey ride with cellmate Bubba.”
10 years? No. Total the time all the kids had to to do because of their bribe taking, and that’s the sentence.
The people running those facilities should be locked away as well… or is not a crime to bribe judges to make a profit?
…reminds me of Boston Legal episode where the Asians were buying the law firm, and there was a court case made of it. Selling off the legal system WILL result in selling off our rights and by extension the very country itself.
This would include privatization of utilities. Bad move.
Where is a crazy M#%#%*F#$%#R with a gun when you need one?
Hmmm? Let’s privatize state prisons! Maybe not.
Were they farming these boys out to Catholic priests?
The part I don’t understand is why the prosecutors never said anything. I don’t know how involved they were but their willful tolerance of the miscarriages of justice deserves at least disbarment.
#11–Fusion==excellent point. Few people recognize how the DA is supposed to act as a check and balance on judges and police and vice versa.
Sad when a “system” breaks down. Local newspaper should do a full review. Like everything else, the DA should have had a few lawyers specializing in juvenile crime. They should be fired for being incompetently stupid, or disbarred for being morally corrupt.
Is there no level of official abuse of children this country won’t foster? I mean, in the case of ONDCP supported STRAIGHT inc. and it’s many offspring physically and psychologically torturing kids, and literally torturing kids to death in some cases, no matter how many times they loose lawsuits or criminal cases, they simply continue torturing and killing. Why? Why are the judges the only ones taking the fall here when the whole system is guilty? Shouldn’t the prosecutors and the bribing prison people get tossed in the clink too?
Why do we tolerate this?
#12 said
“Few people recognize how the DA is supposed to act as a check and balance on judges and police and vice versa.”
No, I think people recognize it, but they understand the realities of life. Prosecutors get re-elected by winning cases, not losing them.
Impartial judges? My rear end!
Right or wrong, that is the way it is. Someday histories will be written about the great experiment of the USA.
If you want to get kicked off a jury say this out loud: jury nullification. This system IS stack against you.
This is what we get for privatizing the prison “industry.”
#3 If a lot of men hadn’t paid a bigger price than your dad you would not exist and this country would be run by people speaking German who would, as a matter of policy, have killed every non ethic German.
As others have noted somebody else was bleeping high wide and handsome or this would have been a no go much sooner. Of course if you only pick on people with no cash…
I hear nothing! I see nothing! I know nothing! This crap happens all the time!
#16 is right..
When prisons are operated for profit, greed will always be a motivation to abuse them.
Incarcerating people for profit is immoral. Where are the Christian values now?
#14–Ranger==what did I post AT ALL that raises in your mind the idea of DA’s “losing cases.”
I “assume” you know what a check and balance against judge and police means, but you have not posted like you do.
They should be tied to a post and given a lash for every day a kid spent in jail.
I’m sorry – anyone who thinks the DA serves as a check or balance on these fiefdom judges needs a serious reality check. DAs are political creatures, pure and simple – they need to be “tough on crime” and put people away in jail. I wouldn’t be surprised if the DA’s office wasn’t complicit in this endeavor.
(Bias check – I’m a public defender. So take my ranting against the DA’s however you want. It is sad these kids weren’t given lawyers though – it’s the right to counsel that keeps shit like this from happening to everyone, and we should all remember that if and when Chief Justice Roberts makes his move to overturn Gideon.)
#12
DA’s are a check and balance against judges etc? ahh ha ha ha ha ha…. is your second job as stand up comedian?
Even in the face of overwhelming DNA evidence they refuse to accept the conviction they achieved on circumstantional and unreliable witnesses with a jury was wrong and that the guy should still be put to death.
Score another one for neo-cons brain fart factory and their must shrink the government by privatizing all governmental functions.
I SERIOUSLY doubt that this is an isolated incident.
Meanwhile, Bernie Madoff, who stole 10s of billions, is still out on bail in his luxury apartment in Manhattan.
We’re becoming more and more like a banana republic, each and every day.
#24.
Both Judges were Democrats and ran as such.
It must be wonderful to live in a world where everything can be reduced to partisan politics.
Go drool in your cup somewhere else, Warden.
#22–Alex==fair point although I did say the DA’s “SHOULD” act as a check and balance. Indeed being a juvenile proceeding and all, may be the DA isn’t even bringing any initial charges?
ie==the first check and balance is whether or not to even bring a case to trial, the second is on what charges?
I have a feeling what with no PD the DA’s role may be less than in an adult criminal trial.
But yea==the whole system gets corrupted by self seeking and lazy behavior, going along to get along.
“I’ve never encountered, and I don’t think that we will in our lifetimes, a case where literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money,”
Dick Cheney wasn’t a judge. But hasn’t the same thing essentially happened in the Iraq War?
What will happened to these judge? Very little! Because the system always protects its own, first. Even when it’s “broken”. This should be bigger news than the Gov. Blagojevich scandal. But I seriously doubt it will be.
You know why this was allowed to happen? Because PA is a largely Republican state. And has all these pro-punishment adult voters, who probably believe the kids will learn a valuable lesson from prison time. Even for a trivial nuisance crime. Of course, if it were their son, grandson, or nephew, that would be a different case. So because of this generational divide, these judges knew they could get away with it.
You can bet the sons of wealthy families were steered clear of this process. Even if some of them did deserve prison time.
#29
These judges did this because they had a stake in the private prison, which gets reimbursed per prisoner per day. Money, plain and simple.
I am so tired of you DUchebags making everything into a political issue.