Payday loans legal; taking bribes not
Mark Ciavarella
A judge should know the difference between legal ways of getting extra cash, like payday loans, and illegal methods, like taking bribes.
Worse yet, two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking bribes as well as sending juveniles to jail unfairly and without proper trials.
Bad judgment
According to The Associated Press, the judges got millions of dollars in kickbacks for sending juveniles to private youth detention facilities. In the city of Wilkes-Barre, Luzerne County Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan will face prosecutors from a side of the courtroom they are not used to.
Literally thousands of kids’ lives were just tossed aside in order for a couple of judges to make some money, said Marsha Levick, an attorney with the Philadelphia Juvenile Law Center.
Levick’s organization is representing hundreds of youths who the two accused judges sentenced.
How much extra cash
Prosecutors say Ciavarella and Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs from lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. Granted, the judges couldn’t have gotten that much money by taking out payday loans, but they did get the money in small installments. Maybe payday loans would have helped; at least they wouldn’t be facing trials now.
The high court is reviewing thousands of sentences to decipher whether they should be overturned and the juveniles’ records expunged.
Disorder in the court
Among the charges they face, the judges are accused of sentencing juvenile offenders without lawyers present. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1967 that children have a constitutional right to counsel.
I have disgraced my judgeship. My actions have destroyed everything I worked to accomplish and I have only myself to blame,” Ciavarella wrote in a letter to his former colleagues.
Conahan has not spoken about the case.
Off to the slammer
The judges are scheduled to plead guilty to fraud Thursday in federal court. Their plea agreements call for sentences of more than seven years behind bars.
They would have saved themselves a lot of grief and up to seven years in prison if they had gotten payday loans to solve their financial troubles.
I doubt this has anything to do with the recession, because judges make pretty good salary. The reason why is so that they aren’t tempted to take bribes! Normally I’d reserve that for lobby friendly Congressmen.
This just prooves how crooked and unjust the legal system can be, I’m sure there are alot of things going on between lawyers and judges that need to be looked at.
I feel sorry for the victims of there crime
I guess taking money from the thugs that own payday loan places is really not much different than taking it from the criminals that ran these prisons.
I’m not sure why the analogy is even made here and frankly I don’t see a difference between these two different types of crooks.
Payday loan sharks should be buried in their own feces.
LOL, why would a judge need cash? I would suspect most (if not all) judges take plenty of “under the table” money from defense lawyers and suspects!
RT
This is an outrage! For this to be happening in the USA is an outrage. We are not sopposed to be like the other countries. Didnt anybody in the courtroom see them deny these minors their rights. I think that more people need to go to jail. Not just these two judges. What was going on in those courtrooms? Where were the lawyers. How many children are in these juvenile detention centers now, that should not be their? What is our country becoming? What a shame!! I dont blame the current generation for its disregard towards authority figures, they can tell when they are being lied to.
Seven years is not enough.