A Little Blog Food for Thought

A few days ago, over my morning coffee, I happened to see a very small, back page, below the fold, article in my local newspaper. Almost missed it and that goes to part of the problem with our badly broken criminal justice system. More on that later.

 

The small headline said something about Pennsylvania judges pleading guilty to sentencing irregularities then a little follow up but not much substance. I say to myself, "self, there has got to be more to this than what the Herald has buried in the back of the paper," so I did a little research on the net and sure enough the picture got much larger and much clearer.

 

What I found was that two of the people that are supposed to protect "We The People" were in effect "selling" children into slavery for their own personal gain. Selling them to privately owned prisons. A juvenile justice advocacy group said more than 6,500 juveniles were affected and most won't be retried.

 

It seems that this has been going on for some time as the two former judges, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan were awaiting trial on guilty pleas entered through a plea bargain back in February. They both entered a plea of guilty to charges that they accepted more than $2.6 million in kickbacks in exchange for rulings that benefited the owners and builder of PA Child Care in Pittston Township and Western PA Child Care in Butler County. They pled guilty to fraud and tax evasion and were expecting sentences of somewhere in the neighborhood of 87 months but, surprise, surprise, the judge threw out the plea agreement saying that they hadn't accepted responsibility for their actions. They're now awaiting trial on a 48-count indictment.

 

Now, if that's not enough, attorneys appeared before a federal judge to argue whether the two former judges and some others are immune from liability in a lawsuit that alleges juveniles were improperly incarcerated. It seems that the doctrine of judicial immunity provides judges wide protection from liability for decisions they make on the bench. Say what??? A least there seems to be someone with a little sanity. One of the attorneys for the juveniles, acknowledged that the doctrine gives judges broad protection but argued that the conduct of Conahan and Ciavarella was so extreme that it fell outside those protections. Do ya' think?? One of the judges routinely denied juveniles their right to an attorney and pressured juvenile probation officials into recommending detention. Another attorney for the juveniles added, “Ciavarella made his own rules. He may as well have set up a courtroom in his garage and put on a black robe because he was acting outside the constitution."

 

Here is part of the official summary from the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.

 

The defendants are alleged to have engaged in honest services fraud by taking millions of dollars from two unnamed persons in connection with the construction, expansion and operation of juvenile detention centers in Luzerne County and elsewhere. The criminal information charges that, between 2004 and 2007, both judges filed materially false annual statements of financial interests with the Administrative Office of the Pennsylvania Courts in which they failed to disclose the sources of income they received from these unnamed persons, and in which they failed to disclose their financial relationship with these businesses. At the same time the Judges were allegedly concealing these payments and financial ties, it is alleged the Judges took discretionary actions in a number of matters involving the juvenile detention facilities without recusing themselves from those matters and without disclosing to parties involved in the proceedings their conflict of interest. These actions are alleged to have included:

 

• Taking official action to remove funding from the Luzerne County budget for the Luzerne County juvenile detention facility, effectively closing that facility;
• Ordering juveniles to be sent to these facilities in which the judges had a financial interest even when Juvenile Probation Officers did not recommend detention;
• Entering a “Placement Guarantee Agreement” to house juveniles in a facility in which the judges had an interest guaranteeing that the Court of Common Pleas would pay an annual “Rental Installment” sum of $1,314,000, without disclosing payments received by the judges; and,
• Summarily granting motions to seal the record and for injunctive relief in a civil case relating to a juvenile detention facility in which the judges had a financial interest.

I mentioned earlier that the tiny article in my hometown paper may be part of the problem. Here is why. Where is the outrage? Buried on the back pages of my hometown paper and how many others? Did you see it in your morning paper? A good article at change.org drew a grand total of 8 comments and this is on a blog dedicated to Criminal Justice Reform. Where is the outrage? Does anyone out there really care about the broken system and the impact it has on its victims? The answer to that is a resounding no. Not unless they are themselves victims or have a loved one, family member, friend, etc. who is a victim.

 

And speaking of Blog food for thought, do you by any wild stretch of the imagination think that these two are the only ones involved in this sort of activity? How many adults may be victims of the same corrupt system? Does anyone need further evidence that "Prisons R Us" is a bad idea? The idea of allowing anyone to profit from the misfortune of others, even self inflicted misfortune, is abhorrent to me.

 

It will be interesting to see how the trial comes out and what about those who paid the bribes, what is to be done with them?