Misblog

Originally Published February 11, 2009; Last Updated July 23, 2010; Last Republished July 23, 2010:

United States Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a two count criminal information against former Court of Common Plea for Luzerne County, Pennsylvania judges Michael T. Conahan and Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. alleging breach of Honest Services1, Wire Fraud (18 U.S.C. §§ 1343, 1346 and 2) and Conspiracy to Defraud the United States (18 U.S.C. §§ 371). In sum the judges are alleged to have secretly received various concealed kickback payments (totaling $2.6M) arising from a scheme to build the privately owned and run juvenile detention facilities PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care (sound like benign daycare), including guarantees of juvenile placement.

Reports indicate the judges summarily pipelined unrepresented children into the detention facilities (sometimes in less than two minutes)³ for trivial offenses like constructing a website parodying a school administrator² or acting as a shoplifting look-out and contrary to probation officers' recommendations.

Web:

• UPDATED 07/23/2010 UPI, Pa. judge pleads guilty in bribe case
• UPDATED 10/31/2009 NYT, Pennsylvania Overturns Many Youths’ Convictions
• 3/27/2009 Pa. Supreme Court orders teens cleared which corrupt poser judges sent to jail as part of their criminal enterprise.

-----notes-----

1. Perform official duties free from deceit, favoritism, bias, self-enrichment, self-dealing, concealment, and conflict of interest.

UPDATED 07/23/2010 Skilling v. US narrowed the use of "honest services" prosecution by requiring an actual bribe or kickback.

2. School administrators, nationwide, hate these student expressions. Instead of ignoring them or constructing their own website evaluating the student websites for content and artful expressions of free speech they will go to great lengths to jail our children for their typically unartful expression!

Worse, parents rarely have the resources to challenge these over zealous administrators and when they do it often requires an appellate level decision to reverse the school administration—of course by that time the damage has been done and the kid is on to high school or college, hopefully.

Notwithstanding the fact that some of these children are "hard to love" and even harder to tolerate efforts are required to ensure over zealous school administrators are held personally liable—referring to the school principal as "the bitch or 'douche bag' in central office" may be unartful, offensive to some, and ribald to others, but it's hardly grounds for impeding a valedictorian’s school career!

3. There are also reports that some children who committed serious offenses were released unexpectedly, untimely, and unknown to the other judges originating the detention.