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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…
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.
#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!