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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.
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#30, Griffy,
That is because most things becomes political on some level.
Advice for Judges Conahan and Ciavarella:- When you are sent down remember – fist can be a verb!
#32, gs,
Because they are white collar types, they will be sent to a minimum protective custody type prison. I don’t expect them to have to suffer under the same conditions they put the kids in.
Oops!
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tom-blumer/2009/02/14/aps-name-party-twist-disgraced-judges-dem-party-id-disappears-after-init
“This should be bigger news than the Gov. Blagojevich scandal. But I seriously doubt it will be.”
Well turns out I was right. I recently hear some more on the news about the Blagojevich thing. But nothing what-so-ever about the PA judges. It’s as if the news organizations have gone out of their way NOT to report this news. Instead they’ve pick the recent plane crash, near Buffalo, as the only worthy news to report from the north eastern states. But nothing about these two judges. Isn’t that amazing?! And Nightline is boring me, right now, with late news of the Monarch butterflies. I guess it’s been a slow news week. Yeah, right!