PA judges lock up teens for kickbacks

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29142654/

In one of the most shocking cases of courtroom graft on record, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.

The high court, meanwhile, is looking into whether hundreds or even thousands of sentences should be overturned and the juveniles’ records expunged.

Among the offenders were teenagers who were locked up for months for stealing loose change from cars, writing a prank note and possessing drug paraphernalia. Many had never been in trouble before. Some were imprisoned even after probation officers recommended against it.

Many appeared without lawyers, despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 1967 ruling that children have a constitutional right to counsel.

The opening is a picture of a girl who was "sentenced to a wilderness camp for building a spoof MySpace page that lampooned her assistant principal."

OK, my idea is, these two judges go to prison and go into a special section, specifically filled with people they sentenced.

Rounding up the unsavory and putting them into your buddies' for-profit prison? It simply couldn't get any worse. I want their bollocks.

It is amazing. This is stuff you would have thought you read about back in the 70's when no one was looking.

Prosecutors say Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC.

These buggers better do time.



I wonder when the mob angle will surface?

Unbelievable - Get everything they own and sell it all with the proceeds going to these kids. Everything.

It's all about the money these days.

Uh huh these days, here we go again.

I lived in Scranton back in the 60s. The level of corruption in that town would make an Illinois governor blush. Its been that way for a long, long time.

I misread the thread title.
I was wondering how on earth teenagers were managing to get kickbacks so young.

This is really the worst. When you have corruption like this, I think life in prison is a fair sentence. Actually, they should go back and calculate the total time these guys incarcerated all the kids for and double it and lock them up for that long.

Well stated glattster.

OH hell, I'm in a mood - lets just kill these assholes too!

:lol:

I'll help...I'm in a mood too!

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A lawsuit has been filed against two Pennsylvania judges accused of taking more than $2 million in kickbacks to send youth offenders to privately run detention centers. The suit names Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan and 14 other defendants. It was filed in federal court late Thursday on behalf of hundreds of children and their families who were alleged victims of the corruption.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090213/D96ATN8G0.html

busterb;534222 wrote:

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) - A lawsuit has been filed against two Pennsylvania judges accused of taking more than $2 million in kickbacks to send youth offenders to privately run detention centers. The suit names Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan and 14 other defendants. It was filed in federal court late Thursday on behalf of hundreds of children and their families who were alleged victims of the corruption.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090213/D96ATN8G0.html

The cool thing about this is that criminal cases need to be brought by the state. This means that the old boy network can allow a plea down to nothing. Civil actions, on the other hand, are brought by attorneys who actually work for the victim.

Even if these guys only end up doing 6 months, they're going to lose everything.

Clearly there is civil rights violations, doesn't that come under federal jurisdiction?

It was filed in federal court, so that would be a yes.

This kind of stuff is all but inevitable as long as the 'facilities' are being run by private firms.

The only thing I find surprising that this is a story from Upstate, rather than Philadelphia.

I guess Philadelphia has more experience in the art of the cover up.

Update: Convictions reversed

ALLENTOWN, Pa. (AP) -- Pennsylvania's highest court on Thursday overturned hundreds of juvenile convictions issued by a corrupt judge who took millions of dollars in kickbacks from youth detention centers.

The state Supreme Court ruled that former Luzerne County President Judge Mark Ciavarella violated the constitutional rights of youth offenders who appeared in his courtroom without lawyers between 2003 and 2008.

''Today's order is not intended to be a quick fix,'' Chief Justice Ronald Castille said in a statement. ''It's going to take some time, but the Supreme Court is committed to righting whatever wrong was perpetrated on Luzerne's juveniles and their families.''

In one of the most egregious cases of judicial corruption ever seen, federal prosecutors charged Ciavarella and another Luzerne County judge, Michael Conahan, with taking $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in privately owned lockups.

The judges pleaded guilty to fraud last month and face sentences of more than seven years in prison.

Thats it? They fucked all those kids up and get only 7 years? How bout 7 free shots from each kid and then take all they own a give it to the kids.

"violated the constitutional rights" opens the way for civil suits.

Good - and I hope they are expedient trials too.

Update:
Ciavarella found guilty on 12 of 39 counts.

Guilty of racketeering, money laundering, and failing to disclose income. Not guilty of kickbacks and various bribery charges.

We'll see how the sentencing works out.

Ciavarella gets 28 years. I don't know if he will be eligible for parole. I wonder if anyone has bothered to add up the total number of years he sentenced all those juveniles to, in order to get the $2.8 million in kickbacks from the for-profit prisons?

I hope he gets buttfucked in the mouth daily for all of eternity.
Thanks for the followup.

What a horrible thing to do to children who have done nothing more than play a prank. Even if they get their records cleared, the experience will leave them scarred for life. :(

There is a notorious suicide of one of these kids. He should have gotten life imprisonment.

"Those three words made me the personification of evil. They made me the devil. They made me the anti-Christ. They made me toxic," Ciavarella told U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik.

Well....yeah.

..and you deserved it. I certainly hope that he felt what all of those defendants who stood before him felt when many of them were railroaded. If he ends up going to a private prison, they should give a single share of stock in the company to each of his victims.

classicman;749645 wrote:

I hope he gets buttfucked in the mouth daily for all of eternity.
.

On general principles, I really dislike the concept of prison rape as some kind of sanctioned addition to punishment. I believe that the impulse diminishes us as individuals and a society and might in some way lead to an institutional reluctance to treat the practice as seriously as it deserves.

That being said, I am at war with the impulse to see him further pay for his abuse of power. One part of me says that justice and the law were successful and that this is sufficient, and the other part does want him to become the 'prom queen' of his cell block. This is not one of my best moments.

richlevy;751542 wrote:

Well....yeah.

..and you deserved it. I certainly hope that he felt what all of those defendants who stood before him felt when many of them were railroaded. If he ends up going to a private prison, they should give a single share of stock in the company to each of his victims.

Ha. Restorative justice in action.