Objectiveness and impartiality are something of a holycow to the legal community. Our justice system is predicated upon the notion of there being an impartial judge in the proceedings. The judge’s job is to watch over and scrutinize the zealous and determined advocates, who are each doing their utmost to protect their clients’ interests.
So just how well is everybody doing?
It seems you never can tell!
Consider the case of Pennsylvania Juvenile Court Judge Mark Ciavarella, and his criminal defense co-defendant Michael T. Conahan, himself a former juvenile judge in the Keystone State.
These two upstanding examples of judicial independence now find themselves on the other side of the bench, begging for the mercy of the court after going down on criminal charges involving what can best be described as trading kids for cash!
Ciavarella was a real tough-guy, apparently known for his zero tolerance posture towards juvenile offenders. He ruled his juvenile court room with an iron fist, sending one luckless 13 year old kid off to 48 days custody for throwing a steak at his mom’s boyfriend. Juvenile offenders could expect no mercy, and were put in custody by Judge Ciavarella at a rate that was completely out of sync with other counties. Ciaverella was responsible for 22% of Pennsylvania’s juvenile detention placements, even though his county accounted for only 3% of the state’s population.
Determined to stamp out the scourge of lawless youth swamping his county, old Ciavarella did not stop there however. He also had no qualms about violating the constitutional rights of juvenile offenders, routinely denying them counsel in violation of the Constitution he was sworn to protect. So many juvenile cases were mishandled by Judge Ciavarella that every case he sat on over a period of FIVE YEARS has now been overturned by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court.
Ciavarella was not so hard on crime when it came to his own behavior! For instance, he apparently had no qualms about accepting $997, 600 (yes, you read it right!!!) in “finder’s fees” from the owner’s of the very same juvenile facilities to which he was so resolute in sending juvenile offenders. And that’s only what he has been ordered to return. It seems he actually may have received millions of dollars in kickbacks while “serving and protecting” the people of Pennsylvania from juvenile delinquents.
It turns out that some time ago Ciaverella’s criminal co-defendant, Judge Micheal T. Conahan, decided it made sense to shut down the State/County run juvenile facilities and hand them over to private enterprise.
He was right! It made a lot of sense for the two judges, who ended up netting more than $2,000,000 in kickbacks from the owners and developers of the facilities. That’s right folks! In layman’s terms, these two characters made two million bucks from sending kids to custody!
But that’s not all! The Commission charged with investigating the incident wondered how such obvious abuses could have continued unreported in a courtroom filled every day with District Attorney’s, Public Defenders, probation officers, police officers and – God help us – private attorneys. The answers were as numerous as they are frightening: fear, collusion, indifference. I personally suspect that old favorite – stupidity. Apparently the lawyers in the courtroom did not see fit to act on the public’s behalf, but stood idly by as five years worth of the counties kids were sold to the highest bidder.
Thank God for regulatory agencies, however! In a spirit of diligently protecting the public from crooked judges and lawyers, the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board displayed tremendous apathy and indifference by ignoring a highly detailed and specific complaint it had received about Conahan, Ciavarella and attorney Robert Powell (a close friend of Ciavarella) for seven months! The complaint finally made its way to Federal Investigators a year and a half after it was received.
Ciavarella just down went on twelve counts including racketeering, conspiracy, mail fraud, money laundering, and filing false tax returns. He was also ordered to return that $997,600. Conahan was nailed on one count of racketeering.
Let’s hope they serve any time they receive in a facility owned by one of the people from whom they took kickbacks!
Leave a Reply