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Saturday, March 28, 2009

Courts - "Residents of Luzerne County, Pa., wondered what led two judges to send thousands of juveniles to detention centers in return for kickbacks — and why they weren’t stopped"

Updating this ILB entry from March 26th, Ian Urbina has a long story in the NY Times today headed "Judges’ Kickback Scheme Thrived Despite Red Flags ." Here are a few quotes:

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. — Things were different in the Luzerne County juvenile courtroom, and everyone knew it. Proceedings on average took less than two minutes. Detention center workers were told in advance how many juveniles to expect at the end of each day — even before hearings to determine their innocence or guilt. Lawyers told families not to bother hiring them. They would not be allowed to speak anyway. * * *

While the scandal continues to ripple nationally as legal experts debate whether juvenile courts have sufficient oversight, here in Luzerne County people are grappling with more immediate questions: How did two native sons, elected twice to the bench to protect children and serve justice, decide to do the opposite? And why did no one stop them?

After reading the story, it still isn't clear to me how this went on unchecked for so long. In the third page of today's story there is mention that at some point federal authorities began investigating the judges, and "in a separate review, state auditors found that the detention centers were systematically overbilling the county ."

I can't help thinking that some of the problems may be tied to the inaccessibility of juvenile court proceedings and records to the public. I found online a 10-year report on Access to Juvenile Courts, that goes through each state's laws. At least in 1998, Pennsylvania had this law:

Pa. Cons. Stat. Ann. tit. 42 § 6307 (1998): Members of the public are not allowed to inspect court files unless a person obtains permission from the court and the court finds that he/she has a legitimate interest in the case or the court.
In other words, it would have been difficult for a parent or a reporter to even begin to explore the possibility of a pattern of abuse, because the judge controlled access to the records. Similarly, juvenile proceedings were/are closed to the press and public.

[MORE] How Appealing has just posted link to this story from The Citizens Voice of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, reported by Michael R. Sisak. Some quotes:

The prosecutors who worked in disgraced Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr.’s courtroom share part of the blame for the injustices he perpetrated on thousands of Luzerne County juveniles, said Marsha Levick, the legal director of the Juvenile Law Center.

“There were other people in the courtroom who stood by here for five years while these kids’ rights were being violated,” Levick said Thursday, after the state Supreme Court authorized Judge Arthur Grim to clear the records of hundreds of the lowest-level offenders who appeared before Ciavarella without an attorney between 2003 and May 2008.

“All of us who work in the system have a collective responsibility to make sure that kids’ rights are enforced,” Levick said. “The difference between a prosecutor and a defense attorney is that the prosecutor represents the victim and they represent the commonwealth — they really stand for justice in that courtroom. I really wish they had not stood by silently.”

District Attorney Jackie Musto Carroll, who has held the office since January 2008, said the prosecutors who handled juvenile cases were told the young defendants had waived their right to counsel and had no reason to suspect wrongdoing.

“Nobody knew the judge was committing any crimes at the time,” Musto Carroll said. “The judge was considered a zero-tolerance, very strict sentencing judge. There was nothing to indicate the judge was doing anything out of the ordinary.”

The Juvenile Law Center filed the petition with the state Supreme Court last April that ultimately led to the court’s ruling Thursday. The Philadelphia-based organization accused Ciavarella of rushing hundreds of young defendants through the system without properly apprising them of their rights to an attorney. Ciavarella limited the closed-door hearings to about 90 seconds each, the Juvenile Law Center said.

The Wilkes-Barre paper has assembled a large archive of documents, earlier stories, and the like. My only quibble is that the items in the list are not identified by date - you have to access the item to learn its date.

Here is a story from Feb. 22nd, 2009, reported by Dave Janoski, that begins:

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, according to lawsuits and federal prosecutors.

Ciavarella did all that in a courtroom that was closed to the public and the media, but open to prosecutors, public defenders, police and probation officials. Why didn’t anyone speak up?

Interviews and court documents portray Ciavarella’s courtroom as a place where the outcome of cases was decided well before a juvenile arrived for a hearing that could take mere minutes. Wielding tight control of the juvenile probation department and his courtroom, Ciavarella pressured court staff to recommend detention, even in cases where staffers believed detention wasn’t warranted, federal prosecutors allege.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 28, 2009 10:09 AM
Posted to Courts in general