Two judges imprisoned teens for cash

February 12, 12:40 PMCivil Liberties ExaminerJ.D. Tuccille

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Hillary Transue, left, was sentenced to a wilderness
camp for building a MySpace page that lampooned
her assistant principal (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

How much is a teenager's freedom worth? If you're Judge Mark Ciavarella or Judge Michael Conahan of the Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, courts, depriving teenagers of their freedom has been worth 2.6 milion dollars. That's the amount of money they raked in for sentencing teenage offenders to privately run juvenile detention centers.

Whether the money came from bribes or extortion is an open question. The judges claim they were straight-up kickbacks; Robert J. Powell the former co-owner of PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care, says the corrupt bench-warmers held him up for payments in return for sending shackled kids his way.

Either way, "justice" was served at a small additional charge.

Judge Conahan apparently shut down the county's own detention centers in 2002, paving the way for the scheme he and his buddy, Ciavarella, cooked up to charge private prisons for the lucrative privilege of housing juvenile offenders .

One of the duo's more egregious moves was to sentence Hillary Transue to three months in a wilderness camp in 2007 for creating a MySpace page that made fun of her school's assistant principal. It was bad enough that she fell afoul of the courts' widespread refusal to recognize that the First Amendment applies to 15-year-olds as much as to 40-year-olds. Now it's apparent that her freedom was sold for a bank deposit. She was even denied the right to counsel -- a right guaranteed by the U.S. Supreme Court over 40 years ago.

Mark Ciavarella has had the good grace to resign from the bench. In a letter (PDF) disputing unrelated charges, he concedes, "your statement that I have disgraced my judgeship is true. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and i only have myself to blame."

Michael Conahan, on the other hand, has stayed mum -- probably hoping that things he doesn't say can't be held against him. It doesn't matter. Both judges were stripped of their judicial status (PDF) by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court "In view of the compelling and immediate need to protect and preserve the integrity of the Unified Judicial System and the administration of justice for the citizens of Luzerne County."

And now both Ciavarella and Conahan have pleaded guilty to fraud in federal court. They are expected to serve more than seven years in prison.

The next step is to review what has passed as juvenile justice in Luzerne County. The appropriately named Judge Arthur E. Grim will have the difficult job of digging through (PDF) all the juvenile cases overseen by the corrupt judges to determine who was, essentially, sold into temporary slavery, who was denied their right to counsel, and what remedies are appropriate.

The Grim report is expected within 120 days.

Contact J.D.: civilliberties (at) tuccille.com