Pennsylvania judges accused of jailing kids for cash

[beeline]

Yeah, I've known that area was pretty corrupt since I was a kid, my dad did a lot of work with the municipalities up that way, and he was always saying it was pretty bad, he was always getting 'outbid' by other engineering firms. But damn, the school districts too? And teachers? Damn.

[beeline]

http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/20091130_Civil_cases_against_judges_involve_emotional_suffering.html

Posted on Mon, Nov. 30, 2009


Civil cases against judges involve emotional suffering
By William Ecenbarger

For The Inquirer

WILKES-BARRE - There's the 16-year-old boy charged with driving without a license and presenting false identification to police in 2007. He was jailed for eight months, and during that time the court garnisheed a $598 Social Security survivor's check he had been receiving since his father's death.

There's the 14-year-old boy who stole loose change from unlocked cars and was sent away in 2007 for a year; when he was released, he was so anxious and depressed he had to drop out of school and now receives homebound instruction.

There's the 14-year-old girl who was jailed for more than a year in 2005 for punching another girl in school; she was emotionally distraught by the incarceration and today has permanent scars from self-mutilation.

They are among the victims cited in a class-action suit by the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center against two former Luzerne County judges who, federal prosecutors say, conspired to send thousands of teenagers off to detention after denying them basic constitutional rights.

As a result of their incarcerations, the JLC says, many of the teenagers suffered emotional damage, were unable to attend school, lost scholarships, were refused military enlistment, or attempted suicide. In addition, they and their parents were forced to pay probation fees and evaluation costs and had their wages garnisheed by the court. Some still owe the court money.

Former Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan are awaiting trial on 48 charges of racketeering, fraud, and bribery in connection with an alleged $2.8 million "kids-for-cash" kickback scheme, but they are also the lead defendants in four civil cases brought by the JLC and three private attorneys on behalf of the youths who were sentenced.

The suits ask that the youths, whose convictions have been invalidated as "a travesty of justice" by the state Supreme Court, be repaid for actual financial losses and awarded compensation for emotional suffering at the hands of the two judges and others involved in the scheme.

The teenagers routinely appeared before Ciavarella without lawyers for hearings that lasted just a few minutes. After being found delinquent, the youths were often shackled and taken to two private detention centers - PA Child Care in Luzerne County and Western PA Child Care in Butler County. Federal authorities say that in exchange for keeping their facilities full, the owners of these two facilities paid bribes to the judges.

On Nov. 20, a federal judge ruled that Ciavarella and Conahan cannot be held liable for actions in their own courtrooms under the 17th-century doctrine of judicial immunity, which is designed to give judges freedom to rule without fear of legal retribution. But U.S. District Judge A. Richard Caputo left the door open to liability for actions outside the courtroom.

For example, the keys to the success of the judges' alleged plot were Conahan's order that closed an existing county-owned juvenile center and the signing of a secret agreement guaranteeing that Ciavarella would send the child-defendants to the new private centers.

Another example of out-of-courtroom activity cited by the JLC is that Ciavarella regularly pressured probation officials to recommend detention over probation to guarantee that the two centers operated at capacity.

The four civil suits comprise a litany of burdensome financial penalties, dashed hopes, and perhaps irreversible lifetime damages.

Ciavarella sent away a 16-year-old boy for 81/2 months on a charge of operating a dirt bike while intoxicated. His parents were required to pay $5,925 in court costs, plus funds were deducted from his father's disability check and his mother's wages.

A 16-year-old girl charged with aggravated assault was told by probation officials that having an attorney would "make matters worse." She was sentenced to the PA Child Care facility for 90 days, suffered acute separation anxiety, and attempted suicide immediately after her arrival.

In 2003, the mother of a 13-year-old boy who was misbehaving at home called police "to scare him." But the boy was arrested against his mother's wishes and, after a two-minute hearing before Ciavarella, was taken away in shackles to a detention center for three months. His mother was assessed several court costs plus $480 a month that was garnisheed from her wages.

She was forced to take money from her retirement plan, incurring taxes and penalties for early withdrawal. Her son was forced to repeat the ninth grade because he had missed too much school time.

In his ruling Nov. 20, Caputo held that county officials - commissioners, the District Attorney's Office, the Probation Department, and the Public Defender's Office - were not liable in the civil action.

But kept in the crosshairs of the plaintiffs' action was Dr. Frank Vita, Conahan's brother-in-law, who was paid $1.1 million in public funds between 2001 and 2007 for court-ordered psychological evaluations. Also remaining in the complaints were two of the judges' alleged coconspirators - a local developer and a local attorney.

Caputo's decision involves only the civil action and has no bearing on criminal allegations against the two judges.

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http://www.philly.com/philly/news/pennsylvania/20091215__Fear_factor__described_in_kids-for-cash_case.html
Posted on Tue, Dec. 15, 2009


'Fear factor' described in kids-for-cash case
Panel heard of Luzerne County judges' reign of power.
By William Ecenbarger

For The Inquirer

WILKES-BARRE - They were known as "Scooch" and "the Boss," and together they unleashed a five-year reign of terror over Luzerne County's courthouse and schools.

"Scooch" is the nickname since childhood of former Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., whose real name came to strike fear into any child unfortunate enough to come before him, even for relatively minor infractions, such as writing on stop signs with a felt pen.

The word in high school classrooms and halls was: If you go before Judge Ciavarella, you're likely to go to jail - especially if he's in a bad mood over Penn State's losing a football game.

"The Boss" was Michael T. Conahan, who was a glowering, unsmiling presence in the century-old courthouse, where intimidation seemed to whistle out of the duct work and swarm over the room like angry bees. Conahan kept a full-nelson grip on the courthouse staff by populating it with his cronies and relatives. Even to Judge Ciavarella, Judge Conahan was the Boss.

These characterizations and accounts have emerged from testimony before a special hearing over four days and two evenings here. A commission is working to determine how former Judges Ciavarella and Conahan could have conspired over five years to deprive thousands of children of their most basic constitutional rights and send them off in shackles to detention centers in which the judges had personal financial interests.

"There are many reasons that this tragedy occurred, but intimidation was clearly one of them," said Superior Court Judge John M. Cleland, chairman of the 11-member Intergovernmental Commission on Juvenile Justice. "Part of this fear factor was greed and ambition on the part of court personnel. You didn't get ahead in Luzerne County by making trouble for the people in power."

Conahan and Ciavarella are charged with 48 counts of racketeering and related charges for allegedly taking $2.8 million in payments from the builder and former co-owner of two private juvenile detention facilities. They originally entered conditional guilty pleas in the case, but withdrew them when a federal judge rejected the terms of their plea agreement. Prosecutors responded with a broadened indictment. The two former jurists have denied the charges.

During the commission hearings, witnesses told of unyielding pressure from Conahan and Ciavarella that led to questionable practices going unquestioned and becoming accepted practices:

In violation of state law, Ciavarella set up tables outside his courtroom where teenage defendants were persuaded to sign forms he created that waived their right to counsel. Once inside his courtroom, Ciavarella, contrary to state law, did not advise his young, unrepresented defendants of the consequences of waiving counsel or of pleading guilty.

Even before being declared delinquent, juveniles were sent to detention centers for as long as two weeks to await psychological evaluations. They would eventually be examined by the court-appointed psychologist, Frank Vita, Conahan's brother-in-law. Vita's recommendations were nearly always the same - "placement," meaning jail.

Hearings before Conahan, which often lasted only a few minutes, were typically interrupted by conversations about college and professional football games and NASCAR racing between the judge and arresting officers and other court personnel. Ciavarella also used the opportunity to collect and pay bets made on games.

Ciavarella established a special "fines court" that would send children to detention centers until their parents could pay for fines imposed by district judges. In one case cited at the hearings, an 11-year-old boy was taken away when his parents were unable to pay a $488 fine. Although the child was only 4-foot-2 and 63 pounds, Ciavarella had him handcuffed and placed in leg shackles.

Conahan's aura of power was enhanced by his longtime association with reputed organized crime figures in Northeast Pennsylvania. Federal court testimony this year said he and William "Big Billy" D'Elia met regularly at a favorite booth in a local restaurant.

D'Elia, reputed leader of one of the nation's oldest organized crime families, is serving nine years in federal prison on money-laundering and witness-tampering charges.

"Politicians and organized crime have been married up here for a long time," said William Kashatus, a local historian who has written five books about the anthracite region. "Conahan's association with D'Elia was well known, and it only added to the mystique that made people afraid of him."

A graphic insight into Conahan's methods was provided at the commission hearings last week by Maryanne C. Petrilla, a Luzerne County commissioner who said the former judge vehemently opposed her decision to fire Sam Guesto as county manager. She said Conahan initially had about 40 local political figures telephone and ask her to change her decision. When she declined, she said, she received a personal call from Conahan.

"The conversation was not what I would call a friendly phone call," Petrilla testified. "He said I could not replace Mr. Guesto. And I said, because of everything that is unfolding, I felt it was important for the county to go in a new direction. And his final words to me were, 'Maryanne, if you do this, you will be finished.' "

Petrilla did not relent and is still a commissioner. Guesto resigned but then was given a job in court administration by Ciavarella.

Petrilla also told the commission that the levels of cronyism and nepotism in the court system were "extremely high," and this was one reason that no one in the courthouse challenged the treatment of juvenile defendants. "The courts hired family and friends, and as a result of the hiring of family and friends, those people who may have seen wrongdoing remained silent," she said.

Commission members were frequently frustrated in their attempts to determine how so many individuals could have stayed silent for so long about what one advocacy group, the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center calls "one of the largest and most serious violations of children's rights in the history of the American legal system."

Cleland posed the question to David W. Lupas, who was the district attorney when many of the abuses occurred, after he testified that none of his assistants ever brought concerns about Ciavarella's conduct to his attention.

"Your testimony was that you never heard it discussed among any of your assistant D.A.s, defense lawyers, public defenders, or anyone involved in the system. Now, either there was incredible incompetence, which I find it hard to believe among that many lawyers and professionals, or there was an awful lot of intimidation about reporting and discussing what was going on. Which was it?"

"I can only surmise that the judge was the judge," Lupas said. "The judge was in charge. The judge handed down kind of his policies, and everyone followed those policies."

The former juvenile probation chief answered the same question this way: "When a judge asked you to do something, you did it."

[beeline]

Posted on Thu, May. 27, 2010
Link

New details emerge in 'kids for cash' scheme
By Trish Wilson

Inquirer Staff Writer

In the summer of 2008, when Luzerne County was aswirl in rumors of a federal investigation, a judge and a lawyer hatched a plan for dealing with the feds.

"OK. Let me tell you something," Judge Michael T. Conahan confided to lawyer Robert J. Powell. "If you want to check me, I'm not wearing a wire."

"Neither am I," Powell lied.

Powell, co-owner of the juvenile jails at the heart of Luzerne County's "kids for cash" scandal, had already agreed to go undercover.

He wore a wire, and brought back evidence that became the cornerstone of the case against Conahan, Luzerne County's former president judge, and former juvenile court judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. Federal prosecutors say the two got kickbacks for hundreds of children sent to two detention centers, often for petty offenses.

Powell's undercover role is described in a brief prosecutors filed this month in Scranton. They laid out fresh details of the alleged kickback scheme, and for the first time included excerpts of conversations Powell recorded.

Those excerpts have come to light even as a state panel prepares to make recommendations on how to avoid another scandal like the one in Luzerne County's courts. The panel's report is due Thursday.

The federal prosecutors' brief contains but a few excerpts of six conversations Powell taped with the now-disgraced judges. But even those excerpts are a fresh reminder that the long-running Luzerne County corruption investigation isn't over.

Thus far, about two dozen people have been charged with crimes. The two judges have been removed from office; Conahan is pleading guilty. Many of the defendants whom Ciavarella sentenced over the years have sued. The scandal has spread to other branches of local government. There is talk that more criminal charges await.

Lawyers for Ciavarella, who has pleaded not guilty, contend the taping violated his due-process rights, and are fighting to suppress the tapes in federal court.

Prosecutors contend that Powell and Robert Mericle, a contractor who built the two juvenile detention centers - PA Child Care in Luzerne, and Western PA Child Care in Butler County - funneled more than $2.9 million to the judges between 2003 and 2006.

The tapes were made in 2008, when word was out that the FBI was probing.

"Tell you one thing right now," Conahan said to Powell at a meeting later that summer, according to the excerpts. ". . . I'd never do anything to hurt you, but I never got the cash from anybody. That's the story. And you better stick to it."

"I'll stick to it," Powell replied.

The brief says Conahan is also heard on tape telling Powell what to say if anyone came asking about "cash" and payments.

"Bobby," Conahan is quoted as telling Powell, ". . . you just gotta say it didn't come from me."

The excerpts have surprised some of the lawyers handling the wave of criminal and civil cases arising from the scandal.

"I was shocked at how frankly they spoke about it," said David Senoff, whose Pittsburgh law firm is handling a suit on behalf of about 400 former juvenile defendants and their parents. "It clearly established how the conspiracy operated, and who was paying whom and how the payments were being made."

Powell and contractor Mericle have also filed guilty pleas. Mericle has admitted that he concealed the truth from a federal grand jury.

The government's latest salvo is aimed at Ciavarella, the former juvenile judge, who is also accused of sending hundreds of children to the private detention centers with little regard for their constitutional rights.

His lawyers say the taping violated a "mutual defense agreement" that the two judges and Powell made after discovering that a federal grand jury had been convened when witnesses started to receive subpoenas. They say Powell was in on that agreement but had a change of heart, and in the summer of 2008 told federal investigators he wanted to cooperate with them instead.

Between July 21 and Sept. 4 that year, Powell met with Conahan and Ciavarella six times, wearing a wire at every meeting.

During the first recorded conversation, Powell told Conahan that he was worried that his business partner, Gregory Zappala, was asking a lot of questions about money matters at the detention centers that Zappala co-owned.

Prosecutors say Mericle paid $997,600 to Ciavarella in 2003 as a finder's fee for getting him the contract to build the Luzerne detention center. They say Ciavarella told him to give the money to Powell, who in turn wired it in two chunks to the judges.

Thanks to the judges, prosecutors say, the detention centers got a steady flow of business - so Powell and his partner, Zappala, decided to build a second center in Western Pennsylvania. When Mericle won the contract for that facility, prosecutors say, he gave the judges an additional $1 million. The money was wired to a business the judges controlled, Pinnacle Group of Jupiter, Fla., in 2005.

In 2006, Mericle won a third contract, to put an expansion on the original juvenile jail - and the judges got an additional $150,000, prosecutors say.

They say the transactions were meant to hide the fact that the money went to the judges, not to Powell as a "finder's fee."

In one excerpt, Powell said Zappala "has a team up there auditing the books, to see what payments were made . . . I think we're getting sued."

Ciavarella is quoted as having replied that Zappala couldn't be stopped, and that it didn't matter, anyway.

"So he can sue us all he wants," Ciavarella said. "He didn't pay the finder's fee. Mericle paid it."

In another conversation, Ciavarella is quoted as saying, "I was the one who directed [Mericle] where to send that money, and I was the one who gave him the instructions as to where to send it."

Zappala was not charged with any crime, and his lawyer, William Brucker, says that "he had no knowledge of anything that was going on."

In September, Mericle pleaded guilty to concealing knowledge of a felony. Prosecutors say he didn't know about Powell's kickbacks to the judges, or about the constitutional violations that placed the children in the detention centers.

His crime, rather, was lying to the IRS when its agents asked him about the finder's fee, Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Zubrod said in court at the time of Mericle's plea agreement. It was different from Powell's payments, which the judges had allegedly demanded.

"Mr. Powell was paying money, and he understood it to be a quid pro quo that he would not get juveniles anymore if he didn't pay up the money," Zubrod said. "And he paid over $700,000 for that purpose."

Prosecutors contend that Powell sent his kickback checks to Pinnacle, the Florida firm - ostensibly to rent a $1 million condo, or to pay fees for a boat slip.

They also say he delivered $143,500 in cash - some of it stuffed into FedEx boxes - and had it delivered to Conahan.

On one tape, prosecutors say, Conahan made reference to the fact that the two judges had closed down the county's old publicly owned juvenile jail.

"Listen, you paid me rent for my condo," Conahan is quoted as saying in another conversation. "You didn't pay me rent for my condo to shut the juvenile detention center down or fix cases."

"It's $15,000 for 60 months. $900,000," Conahan continued. "That's what you were supposed to pay."

In other taped conversations, the participants wondered if an unnamed female employee was cooperating with federal investigators.

"But I'm gonna tell you, she didn't give me any boxes," Conahan is quoted as having told Powell. "And if you gave her stuff to give to me . . . it was documents. Maps. It was anything."

"That's our story," Powell said. "We'll stick to it."

"Yeah," Conahan said. "She's wearing a wire. That's why she didn't show up today."

Al Flora, Ciavarella's criminal defense attorney - and, as of two weeks ago, Luzerne County's chief public defender - said he intended to file a reply to the government's brief, which is due Friday. In previous motions, defense attorneys argued that the tapes are not admissible because they contain the defendants' defense strategy - and that prosecutors have engaged in "outrageous" conduct.

Prosecutors said the taped conversations weren't about strategy - they were about perjury.

"Powell repeatedly pointed out that he had in fact paid them cash on several occasions," the prosecutors' brief says. "The defendants replied that they needed to testify that they had received no cash from Powell and warned Powell that he had better keep to that story."

That evidence is key to the prosecution's case against Ciavarella. A federal judge is expected to decide this summer whether the tapes can be used in court.


______________________________________________________________________________________

On edit: Full PDF report from the Interbranch Commission of Juvenile Justice here

[MinM]

The Crucifixion Of Greg Skrepenak

The holy and sainted Democrats who run Pennsylvania's Luzerne County drafted local sports legend and political neophyte Greg Skrepenak to run for county commissioner in 2003. He easily won as expected and was promptly named chairman of the board.

Skrepenak, known in the area as Skrep, won All-American honors in football and basketball at Wilkes Barre's G.A.R. Memorial Junior Senior High School in the 1980s and was an MVP in baseball. Skrep went on to the University of Michigan were he became an All-American offensive lineman and was the Gator Bowl MVP in 1991. He went on to a respectable pro career with the Los Angeles and Oakland Raiders and the Carolina Panthers.

Skrep's life was not a bed of roses, however. Personal issues led to his retirement from football. His wife had become addicted to drugs and he was raising by himself his daughter and two sons.

Skrep as commissioner did as he was told and in return was given rein to indulge his dreams of expanding services to those with drug problems and youth at risk. He ran for re-election in 2007 and again easily won.

Maybe the most damning thing Skrep did in his tenure as Democrat Party puppet was vote to use private detention centers for juveniles. These centers were paid on a per prisoner basis. This resulted in horrifying abuse. Kids who committed rather minor offenses were ordered incarcerated by judges who received kickbacks. Anyway, the sin was not the vote, as dumb as it may have been in hindsight, but the kickbacks and Skrep has not been connected to them in the slightest.

What Skrep was connected to was taking a $5,000 discount from the fellow who was building his condo, a fellow who then at Skrep's behest received some sweet tax breaks from the county. Skrep initially denied seeing anything wrong in this. He though the discount was due to friendship and said he would have pushed for a tax break for the fellow anyway because, well, he was his friend. Those who know him believe him. Skrep could safely be described as the dream commissioner for a Luzerne County party boss.

Anyway, a hungry federal prosecutor couldn't resist such an easy chance to put a new head on the wall and Skrep was charged with bribery, a charge to which he would eventually plead guilty.

With the big man safely down, the local media jumped on him with both feet. Every word he uttered in his defense was questioned. His children were ridiculed. The references to his religion he made during his apology at his sentencing were mercilessly mocked.

U.S. District Judge Richard P. Conaboy gave him 24 months and those who leech pleasure from other's pain gave themselves pats on the back.

Oh, if only Skrep had been a billionaire pedophile like Jeff Epstein for whom our courageous men and women in federal law enforcement managed to also get a two-year sentence. Then Skrep could have daily furloughs to his office for his first year and serve his second year under house arrest.

But the feds have their priorities, one guesses.

Posted by Bill Lawrence at 8/9/2010 4:56 PM

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://articles.philly.com/2011-02-19/n ... ciavarella

SCRANTON - A federal jury Friday found former Luzerne County Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. guilty of racketeering in one of the nation's worst judicial scandals, a crime in which prosecutors said the former judge used children "as pawns to enrich himself."

In convicting Ciavarella of racketeering, the jury agreed with prosecutors that he and another corrupt judge had taken an illegal payment of nearly $1 million from a juvenile detention center's builder and then hidden the money.

The panel of six men and six women also found Ciavarella guilty of "honest services mail fraud" and of being a tax cheat for failing to list that money and more on his annual public financial-disclosure forms and on four years of tax returns. In addition, they found him guilty of conspiring to launder money.

The jurors acquitted Ciavarella of extortion and bribery in connection with $1.9 million that prosecutors said the judges extracted from the builder and owner of two juvenile-detention centers, including lurid allegations that Ciavarella shared in FedEx boxes stuffed with tens of thousands of dollars in cash.

Convicted on 12 of the 39 counts he faced, Ciavarella faces a minimum sentence of 13 years in prison under federal sentencing guidelines.

Ciavarella was expressionless when the jury read its verdict. Pale and almost meek during his trial, though known as "Mr. Zero Tolerance" when he presided over Juvenile Court, he was released to await sentencing.

As he left the courtroom, Ciavarella said the verdict was something of a vindication. He "never took a dime to send a kid anywhere," he asserted.

One of his defense lawyers, Al Flora Jr., also claimed a kind of victory.

"There was never a bribe. This was not a 'cash for kids' scandal," Flora said, quoting the phrase that has come to epitomize the case since Ciavarella and Luzerne County's former president judge, Michael T. Conahan, were indicted two years ago.

U.S. Attorney Peter Smith, the top federal prosecutor in the region, rejected the defense view. "I find it interesting that a man just convicted of racketeering would consider this a victory," Smith said. "I'd like to know what he'd consider a defeat."

Lourdes Rosado, associate director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, which played a key role in bringing the scandal to light, also dismissed the defense claims.

"We are immensely gratified to see this day come and see that justice has been done," Rosado said.

[justdrew]

so when is the "juvenile detention center's builder" going to jail?

[Pele'sDaughter]

Sheesh, there were two more pages of that article that I failed to paste or even mention. From page three:

According to testimony, much of the money was sent on this circuitous route: It was wired from the center's builder, Rob Mericle. Then, it proceeded to Powell, to a lawyer associate of Powell's, to Conahan's beverage company, and, finally, into Ciavarella's bank account.

But the jury acquitted him with regard to later payments in 2004, 2005 and 2006.

The judges' scheme began unfolding about 10 years ago.

The pair cut off sending delinquent children to a county-owned facility, saying it was in terrible condition. This created a business opportunity for Powell, a wealthy tort lawyer and developer, who hired Mericle to construct a new facility - and secretly began paying millions to the judges.

Ciavarella sentenced youngsters to incarceration at a rate far higher than elsewhere in Pennsylvania.

After the scandal broke, the state Supreme Court agreed to wipe out the criminal records of up to 4,000 youngsters who appeared before Ciavarella.

As the government's top witness, Powell testified that the two judges were "relentless" in their demands for money.

He and Mericle have also pleaded guilty to charges in connection with the scheme.

When Ciavarella took the stand in his own defense on Tuesday, he insisted he had viewed the payments as legal rewards for hooking up Mericle and Powell.

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://thetimes-tribune.com/news/ciavar ... z1UjNeeQ46

Former Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. has been sentenced to 28 years in prison on charges stemming from the Luzerne County corruption scandal. He will be taken into custody.

U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik issued the sentence after an hour-long hearing where Ciavarella defended himself against the stigma that he sold juveniles to a for-profit detention center in exchange for a share of $2.8 million in payoffs.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Gordon Zubrod rejected those arguments.

"Mr. Ciavarella's argument seems to be that he was not selling kids retail," Zubrod said. "We agree with that. He was selling them wholesale."

One parent shouted "woo hoo" after Ciavarella was sentenced. A smattering of claps was heard in the hallway.

Earlier this morning, Ciavarella addressed the court and asked to not be seen as cocky. He said he wanted to explain his actions and placed all the blame for what took place on himself.

He said even though he didn't think his actions were illegal, he knew they could be unethical.

Prosecutors asked the judge to give Ciavarella a life sentence because that is the only way that justice could be doled out. They said justice is critical because of the egregious behavior of Ciavarella.

The government specifically asked that Ciavarella only be judged on the charges he was found guilty of.

Prosecutors admonished Ciavarella for not leaving the courthouse meekly after being found guilty of the charges in February. They argued that leaving meekly would have helped the community begin to heal and the wounds left on the community and the justice system by his actions that will last far longer than his sentence.

8:45 a.m.

Former Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. arrived for his sentencing this morning through a side door of the William J. Nealon Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse at about 7:30 a.m. He offered no statement to the media.

While Ciavarella went quietly through the side entrance, juveniles he sentenced, their families and supporters stood out front wearing T-shirts in memory of Edward Kenzakoski III, a juvenile Ciavarella sentenced who later killed himself. Kenzakoski's mother, Sandy Fonzo,who confronted Ciavarella after the verdict in February, led the charge and said she hopes to see justice in the form of the maximum sentence.

It remained unclear if Ciavarella would go directly from the courthouse to serve his sentence, or if Kosik would allow him time to put his affairs in order. Sentencing is set to begin at 9 a.m.

[conniption]

investmentwatchblog

FINALLY! TWO Judges Sentenced To 28 Years For Selling ‘Kids For Cash’ To Prisons

Submitted by IWB, on August 28th, 2015

You Never hear of these stories: the corruption at the top being brought out into the LIGHT.(despite the OVER coverage of this claimed by defense attorneys)

The fact that someone would even PROPOSE this to a sitting judge speaks volumes to the notion that this is NOT an isolated incident–more on that below:

Take encouragement–perhaps there WILL be a return to the Rule of Law—-soon.

Judge Sentenced To 28 Years For Selling ‘Kids For Cash’ To Prisons

The Associated Press says the following:

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court tossed about 4,000 convictions issued by Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008, saying he violated the constitutional rights of the juveniles, including the right to legal counsel and the right to intelligently enter a plea.

Ciavarella, 61, was tried and convicted of racketeering charges earlier this year. His attorneys had asked for a “reasonable” sentence in court papers, saying, in effect, that he’s already been punished enough.

“The media attention to this matter has exceeded coverage given to many and almost all capital murders, and despite protestation, he will forever be unjustly branded as the ‘Kids for Cash’ judge,” their sentencing memo said.

The Times Leader reports that the court house in Scranton was overflowing as over a dozen people who had been essentially “sold” to prisons by the judge turned out to exchange horror stories.

http://countercurrentnews.com/2015/08/j ... -28-years/

………………………..
JUDGE #1
“Mark Arthur Ciavarella, Jr. (born March 3, 1950) is a convicted felon (Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate number 15008-067) and former President Judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania who was involved, along with fellow judge Michael Conahan, in the “Kids for cash” scandal in 2008.[4]

In August 2011, Ciavarella was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison for his involvement in the Kids for Cash scandal.[5]”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Ciavarella

JUDGE #2

Michael T. Conahan (born April 21, 1952) is a convicted felon and former judge from Luzerne County, Pennsylvania who was involved in the “Kids for cash” scandal in 2008[1] with fellow judge Mark Ciavarella. [2]

As president judge, Conahan used his budgetary discretion to stop funding the county public youth detention facility[4] and agreed to send teens instead to a new private facility. He is accused of agreeing to generate at least $1.3 million per year in costs that could be billed to taxpayers in exchange for kickbacks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Conahan

………………………..

There is more: RICO charges coming……………

………………………..

Two judges, President Judge Mark Ciavarella and Senior Judge Michael Conahan, were accused of accepting money from Robert Mericle, builder of two private, for-profit youth centers for the detention of juveniles, in return for contracting with the facilities and imposing harsh adjudications on juveniles brought before their courts to increase the number of residents in the centers.[1][2]

For example, Ciavarella adjudicated children to extended stays in youth centers for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, or shoplifting DVDs from Wal-mart.[3] Ciavarella and Conahan pled guilty on February 13, 2009, pursuant to a plea agreement, to federal charges of honest services fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States (failing to report income to the Internal Revenue Service, known as tax evasion) in connection with receiving $2.6 million in payments from managers at PA Child Care in Pittston Township and its sister company Western PA Child Care in Butler County.[4][5] The plea agreement was later voided by a federal judge, who was dissatisfied with the post-plea conduct of the defendants, and the two judges charged subsequently withdrew their guilty pleas, raising the possibility of a criminal trial.[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

Now let’s read about the TWO CORPORATIONS involved with this that are…wait for it…………………

STILL IN OPERATION

Referrals
Juvenile courts can make referrals to Mid-Atlantic Youth Services. If an adolescent in your care is in need of help, please contact Corey Shumaker at 814-221-5684 or via email at cshumaker@midatlanticyouth.com.

ALL they did was change their incorporated name, and then get a slap on the wrist–no one yet except the above have been held to accoount:

PA Child Care
PA Child Care (formerly Luzerne County Juvenile Center) offers secure programs for males and females. This state-of-the-art facility is located in Pittston Township, Luzerne County and is easily accessible from Route 81.

http://www.midatlanticyouth.com/facilit ... erne.shtml

And the second one…

Western PA Child Care,[3] in Butler County, Pennsylvania. Treatment at both facilities is provided by Mid Atlantic Youth Services.[1] Gregory Zappala took sole ownership of the company when he purchased co-owner Robert Powell’s share in June 2008.[4]

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NOW THE BOMBSHELL

WHO owns these facilities and WHY ARE THEY STILL OPERATING???????????????

Detention scheme was lucrative, harmful

Federal investigators said they sentenced children to juvenile detention centers in which they had financial interests, and at times did so against probation officers’ recommendations and without the children having legal representation.

Dan Fee, a spokesman for Greg Zappala, said Mr. Zappala had no knowledge of the payments to the judges. Mr. Zappala has not been accused of any wrongdoing and is not a target of the investigation, according to a source close to the federal probe.

Attorneys for Mr. Zappala’s former partner in the centers, Hazleton attorney Robert Powell, have said Mr. Powell made payments to the Luzerne judges. But they also called Mr. Powell a victim of extortion, and said he ultimately reported the shakedown to authorities.

Also, the federal complaint against the judges describes an unnamed contractor who built the centers as a second provider of alleged kickbacks. Other court records, including documents in two civil lawsuits filed Friday by families of some of the juveniles sentenced in Luzerne County, identify that contractor as Robert Mericle of Mericle Construction in Wilkes-Barre.

Western Pennsylvania Child Care and Pennsylvania Child Care in Pittston, Luzerne County, are owned by Greg Zappala, brother of Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. and son of former state Supreme Court Chief Justice Stephen A. Zappala Sr.



So

Why is this important NOW?

It happenned in 07 right?

Ciavarella was convicted in 2011 of racketeering and other charges, and sentenced to 28 years in prison. Conahan, a friend of Powell’s who oversaw the scam, pleaded guilty to racketeering and was sentenced to more than 17 years behind bars. A fourth conspirator, developer Robert Mericle, pleaded guilty for his part in the plot and was sentenced to a year in prison.

The victims and their families have also won millions in judgments from Mericle and Powell’s companies.

All that’s left to adjudicate now are two additional class-action claims against Ciavarella and Conahan, said Marsha Levick, deputy director of Juvenile Law Center, the Philadelphia non-profit that sparked the case when it began investigating questionable juvenile lockups in Luzerne County in 2007.

Pennsylvania Seeks to Close Books on “Kids for Cash” Scandal–Aug 12 2015,

Levick said that there a measure of satisfaction among most of the 2,500 victims and their families

From the link:

“One of the biggest corruption scandals to hit America’s juvenile justice system began unfolding in 2007, when parents in a central Pennsylvania county began to complain that their children had been tossed into for-profit youth centers without a lawyer to represent them.

Over the past eight years, the kickback scheme, known as “kids for cash,” has resulted in prison terms for two Luzerne County judges and two businessmen — and convictions of thousands of juveniles have been tossed out.

Now the case is entering its final chapter: a few remaining class action lawsuits in which victims are seeking millions of dollars in compensation.

One of those claims drew to a close Monday, when a federal judge signed off on a settlement in which one of the businessmen, Robert Powell, would pay $4.75 million. The actual payouts will begin in December, after the plaintiffs choose whether to accept the settlement.

Powell, who co-owned two private juvenile justice facilities, served an 18-month prison term after admitting to paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes to former Court of Common Pleas Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. and his boss, Judge Michael Conahan. In return, Ciavarella routinely found children guilty and sent them to Powell’s facilities. ”

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/pen ... al-n408666