PA: evil judge, juvy do-over

From the New York Times:

Clean Slates for Youths Sentenced Fraudulently

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on Thursday ordered the slate cleaned for hundreds of youths who had been sentenced by a corrupt judge.

The young people had been sent to privately run detention centers from 2003 to 2008 as part of a judicial kickback scheme that shocked Pennsylvania and the nation. The judge in the cases, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. of Luzerne County, is one of two who pleaded guilty last month to wire fraud and conspiracy for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks.

The exact number of records to be expunged was not stated in the court’s order (pdf file); a special master is investigating the cases...

PA: judge - "I just don’t believe I have to spoon-feed people"

From the Scranton Times-Tribune:

Nearly half of Luzerne cases lacked representation

For years, Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. denied juvenile defendants their rights, imprisoned them over the recommendations of probation officers and took millions in kickbacks from the co-owner of two juvenile detention centers that earned nearly $30 million with his help...

Interviews and court documents portray Judge Ciavarella’s courtroom as a place where the outcome of cases was decided well before a hearing. Judge Ciavarella pressured court staff to recommend detention, even in cases where staffers believed detention wasn’t warranted, federal prosecutors allege...

Full rundown from Wilkes-Barre's CitizensVoice.com: Court Corruption Probe

PA: juvenile injustice, judicial avarice

The juvenile reformers and public defenders have been talking about this, and now it's made the New York Times:

Judges Plead Guilty in Payoffs for Jailing Youths

(O)n Thursday... (J)udge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers... While prosecutors say that Judge Conahan, 56, secured contracts for the two centers to house juvenile offenders, Judge Ciavarella, 58, was the one who carried out the sentencing to keep the centers filled.

“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003.

Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention. The case has shocked Luzerne County... And it raised concerns about whether juveniles should be required to have counsel either before or during their appearances in court and whether juvenile courts should be open to the public or child advocates...

Archaeologists of human souls

From the Lehigh Valley Morning Call:

New specialists delve deep to keep convicts off death row - Mitigating circumstances: Experts in showing why killers should live are now crucial in capital cases

Mitigation experts, who can be social workers, educators, psychologists or anthropologists, are becoming crucial as state appellate courts and the U.S. Supreme Court continue to demand more of lawyers mounting a defense in capital murder cases...

The specialists are archaeologists of sorts who dig and sift through decades of a defendant's life to unearth clues to his personality and behavior. Was he sexually or physically abused as a child? Did his mother have a complicated pregnancy? Did he suffer brain damage? Was his father an alcoholic?

The answers might convince a jury that a defendant's life should be saved...

Here is the mitigation specialist I hired back then on my only DP case. Couldn't have done it without her.

(Via StandDown Texas)

PA: no good deed

Justice is blind; injustice is a poke in the eye

Life's not easy for public defenders. They are, by most accounts, underpaid, overloaded with cases and often have to represent some of the most incorrigible criminals. But most get by on the belief they are providing a service to society.

Dauphin County Assistant Public Defender Bryan M. McQuillan got a dent in those beliefs when his car was stolen Monday.

One day I will tell you about when I got one of those dents, sitting in court in Boise, watching my colleague Ed arguing for bond reduction for a client who years before had committed a very serious felony against someone who was very dear to me. But not today.

(Aside: if anyone knows my friend and old co-worker Jack M., now of the Dauphin County P.D.'s Office, ask him to drop me an e-mail.)