PA: Luzerne judge broke his vow to reform

NOTE: "Luzerne County District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll, who assisted with the investigation into the judges, said last year that the case lacked merit because it identified only a handful of juveniles who were affected."

This is how the justice system works in PA....ignore "and justice for all" in favor of "and justice only if you're lucky to have been one of a significant number abused by a corrupt system..."

Every system I've worked with in PA is like this....hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil...until the "evil" is so rampant it can no longer be hidden away; so it becomes more of a positive PR stunt that anything else....when they have no choice but to fix one series of problems to divert attention from the numerous others...

Posted on Wed, Jan. 28, 2009
By John Sullivan Inquirer Staff Writer
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/38520577.html

Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. said he'd never do it again.

In 2000, the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia accused the Luzerne County Juvenile Court judge of detaining a 13-year-old boy without informing him of his constitutional right to an attorney.

A state court agreed.

"Even if they come in and tell me that they don't want a lawyer, they're going to have one," Ciavarella told the Wilkes-Barre Times Leader in 2001.

Yet for years afterward, Ciavarella repeatedly violated the rights of hundreds of children by shipping them to a juvenile center without telling them they had the right to an attorney, according to a petition to the state Supreme Court filed by the Juvenile Law Center.

On Monday, Ciavarella and another judge said they would plead guilty to charges that they hid $2.6 million in secret payments from one of the centers' owners and a construction contractor.

The charges include allegations that the judges locked up juveniles at the detention centers even when probation officers recommended against it.

Through an attorney yesterday, Ciavarella declined to comment on allegations by the law center that he violated the rights of juvenile offenders by failing to tell them of their legal rights.

In a statement, Ciavarella's attorney, Al Flora Jr., said the judge denied sending any child to a detention center because of money.

The revelations renewed the controversy over Ciavarella's court practices and have prompted the juvenile center in Philadelphia, which filed both petitions, to consider further moves, including an appeal to a federal court.

"There are hundreds of kids whose constitutional rights have been violated in the most flagrant way," said Marsha L. Levick, the center's legal director.

"It was stunning to us that the same judge was still doing the same thing" he was doing in 2000, she said.

The case revolves around two child care centers: PA Child Care L.L.C. and Western PA Child Care L.L.C., both of which opened in the last few years.

Federal authorities allege that Ciavarella and another Luzerne County Court judge, Michael T. Conahan, accepted payment from two people, identified as Participant 1 and Participant 2 in the federal charges.

Participant 1 is described as a Luzerne County lawyer who conducted business as PA Child Care L.L.C.

PA Child Care was owned at the time by Butler County lawyer Robert A. Powell and Pittsburgh-area investment banker Gregory R. Zappala, according to the state Department of Public Welfare.

Powell sold his interest in the facility to Zappala in June 2008, after the alleged illegal activity occurred.

An attorney for Powell, who has not been charged, said his client had no comment. Officials with PA Child Care did not return a call seeking comment from Zappala. Zappala is not accused of any wrongdoing.

Participant 2 is identified as a contractor who was a friend of Ciavarella's who built the center.

The charges also allege that the judges removed funding from a competing county facility that they said was unsafe and helped secure deals that reaped the new detention facilities millions of dollars.

In an audit, the DPW found that PA Child Care earned an excessive profit and that the county could have built three detention centers for the cost of what it paid to PA Child Care.

Now, the Juvenile Law Center is considering reprising its petition to the state Supreme Court, which declined to hear it this month. It may also consider a civil action.

"You have, arguably, a rogue judge acting outside the requirements and obligations of his office, making decisions influenced by financial remuneration on the backs of children," Levick said. "That's something the Supreme Court ought to want to fix."

The Juvenile Law Center was joined in its 2008 case by the DPW. In a brief, the welfare department said the rate at which juveniles were unrepresented by attorneys in Luzerne County was 10 times the state average and "so dramatic as to require inference of a systematic deprivation of the constitutional rights of accused juveniles by the Luzerne County Court."

The state also noted that out-of-home placements in the county were 21/2 times higher than the state average, a number that would surely have been lower if more juveniles had attorneys, Corbett said.

State Attorney General Tom Corbett also filed a brief saying that 60 percent of the youths who did not have attorneys landed in detention centers. He said the allegations raised serious concerns about the fairness and integrity of the proceedings.

Luzerne County District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll, who assisted with the investigation into the judges, said last year that the case lacked merit because it identified only a handful of juveniles who were affected.

One case the juvenile law center cited in its petition was that of high school student Jessica Van Reeth, a good student who had never been in trouble before she was caught with a lighter and a marijuana pipe.

She and her father did not recall signing a waiver of counsel. Van Reeth, who was 16, had been suspended from school for 10 days. A Juvenile Court officer recommended probation because she seemed like a good young person.

But in a 90-second hearing in 2007, Van Reeth admitted having the lighter and pipe. Ciavarella asked whether she had heard him speak at her school about drugs.

She had.

Ciavarella then sentenced her to three months in a wilderness camp.

Contact staff writer John Sullivan at 215-854-2473