Kids for Cash Read online

  “Your Honor, I will respectfully disagree with that Supreme Court opinion. I never violated one child’s right. There’s no hard-core evidence that that ever happened. Your Honor, my courtroom was conducted—and it was always conducted in a fair and reasonable manner. Those children were not denied their rights.” There is an audible disbelieving gasp from the T-shirt area, but Ciavarella appears not to hear it. “They had the right to counsel. They had the right to confront witnesses. They had the right to make whatever statements they wanted to make, and they also had the right if they chose—and their families chose—to waive counsel. I did not deny them that right.” Hillary stifles a scream, and Laurene reaches over and pats her arm. “I think the misconception here, Your Honor, is that there was an obligation on me to do something that I didn’t do. I did everything that I was obligated to do to protect those children’s rights. I never violated any of their rights.” Sandy Fonzo has reddened and is trembling.

  Zubrod stands, fingers his bow tie, and starts to address the issue of whether Ciavarella’s character should be considered in the sentencing. But then he seems to sense the tension in back of him: “I first wish, Your Honor, to acknowledge the presence in the courtroom and in the spillover courtroom of a number of persons who were victims of Mark Ciavarella’s criminal conduct.” There is a palpable release of tension in the spectator rows. Zubrod continues, and concludes: “One aspect of Mr. Ciavarella’s history outweighs all others. That is his failure to accept responsibility for the jury verdict, to accept the responsibility for his actions. From almost the day of initiation of charges against him to the day the jury found him guilty of accepting bribes and kickbacks, he has consistently and pro-actively refused to accept responsibility for his crimes.”

  Zubrod sits down, and Kosik looks to the defense table. There is silence as the judge clears his throat: “Okay. I’ve been doing this forty years. I can under oath say that it has never been a pleasant task. Everything about this case has already been said, addressed orally, in writing by individuals, judicial and otherwise including the media. So we will get right down to business.” The Transue women are holding hands. “Pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act, it is the judgment of the court the defendant is committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons to be imprisoned for a term of 336 months.” There is a nanosecond pause while the entire room divides 336 by 12 and comes up with 28. Someone shouts, “Woo-hoo!” from the back row. Hillary looks at Ciavarella and says, “Bye-bye.” Laurene is teary. “Do you know what this means? Do you know how much this means?” She answers her own question. “There’s a Russian journalist who keeps wanting to interview me. From the tone of her emails, I know she wants to make America look bad. I’m avoiding her because I don’t think what happened to these kids is typical of our country. But if we hadn’t made Ciavarella answer for this—not for the bribery, but for the injustice—then the whole world would have thought this is how it’s done here.”

  It is one of the longest sentences ever handed down by a federal court in a public corruption case. In addition to the prison term, Kosik orders Ciavarella to pay restitution of nearly $2.2 million that includes the first payment from Mericle and his judicial salary between 2000 and 2007. He also owes the Internal Revenue Service $207,861 in back taxes.

  There is an outbreak of hugging. Among the Ciavarella family, it is grief based. Among the T-shirt contingent, it is joyous. The happy ones soon spill out into the hallways and then outside the building, where the morning has ripened into meteorologic perfection—sunny and seventy-two degrees. Sandy Fonzo tells microphones and cameras, “The judge was wrong. What he did to my son, what he did to all the families, was wrong. Today proves that.” Hillary Transue is asked about Ciavarella’s comments just before the sentencing. “I was sickened and disgusted,” she says, bitterness buzzing in her voice. “This entire time he has been adamant about denying he did any of those things to children. It was despicable that, with the victims sitting in the room, he would dare deny what he did.”

  Flora is trying to tell reporters that he will appeal both Ciavarella’s conviction and his sentence, which he said violates the constitutional prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. “You had a guy who was acquitted of twenty-seven counts and found responsible for receiving one payment and to get twenty-eight years? I’ve represented people who committed third-degree murder who have gotten seven to eight years. It’s quite a shock.” But most of his words are drowned out by chants of “Kids for Cash, Kids for Cash.”

  Peter J. Smith, the U.S. attorney, calls Ciavarella’s complaint about the lack of trial evidence in the kids-for-cash scheme legal hairsplitting: “The juvenile justice system is the responsibility primarily of the state of Pennsylvania. We can’t decide or rehear juvenile cases in a federal criminal proceeding. It is fair to say that there was no evidence presented regarding a specific cash payment to Ciavarella or Conahan for any particular individual juvenile sent to facilities owned or controlled by Powell or Mericle, but the facts showed clearly here that it was the overall corrupt scheme that contaminated the entire system.” Zubrod chimes in that Ciavarella’s pre-sentencing behavior was typical of the intimidation tactics he used in his own courtroom: “I think that’s his way of doing things. Never retreat. Always go on the attack. Always blame somebody else. Always get them to back off. He tried it with this judge. It didn’t work.”

  Back in the courtroom, a handcuffed Ciavarella is escorted by marshals to a waiting black van with tinted windows. It will transport him to a federal holding center in Philadelphia to await assignment to a permanent prison. He is entered into the federal inmate database as prisoner 15008-067.

  In May 2012, Ciavarella asked the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn his conviction on the grounds that Kosik should have disqualified himself because of pretrial statements he made to the media and because the evidence at the trial failed to support a conviction.

  Mark Ciavarella was undergoing a thirty-day orientation at the Federal Correctional Institution in Pekin, Illinois, when his co-conspirator, Michael Conahan, came into federal court in Scranton on September 23, 2011, for sentencing. He arrived more than an hour early, holding hands with his wife Barbara, who wore a forced smile, as though the corners of her mouth were being tugged by wires. Conahan’s tan suit jacket was slung over his left arm and his tie was loosened. Between two fingers he held a typewritten statement. Before entering the courtroom, he donned his jacket and tightened his tie. Inside he was greeted by some two dozen family members and friends, including several of his eight siblings. The Conahans had no children. As the clock ticked toward 9:30 a.m., Conahan sat at the defense table, upright as a genteel dinner guest, and reviewed the typewritten pages.

  Michael Conahan did not dispatch a single child to undeserved detention, but the scandal would not have been possible were it not for his behind-the-scenes political manipulations, secret agreements, and money laundering. He had been free on bail since July 2010, when he pleaded guilty to one count of racketeering conspiracy in the scheme. Recently he had been living in Florida in a house his wife purchased in the summer of 2011.

  Kosik entered the courtroom precisely on schedule and told everyone to sit down. He invited Philip Gelso, Conahan’s attorney, to address the court. Gelso said his client had begun seeing a psychologist in December 2009 in an effort to understand his illegal behavior in the kids-for-cash scandal: “Through the process, what became apparent was that Mike had to confront demons that were revealed in the psychological testing, that was confirmed in the conversations with his siblings, and locked away by years of repression. We found out that, despite his outward persona of confidence, Mike suffered from insidious feelings of inadequacy and insecurity. He comes from a family with a patriarch who drove his children to success and used money as a barometer of that success. He was taught the ends justified the means. And due to these deep insecurities and inadequacies, he used repression and alcohol as a defense mechanism to keep those insecur
ities in check and help him ignore the consequences of his actions.”

  Gelso claimed that Conahan’s father, a powerful politician and businessman, “beat him mercilessly” when he was an adolescent, once because he forgot to stoke the furnace fire in the family-run funeral home. Gelso then attacked Conahan’s co-conspirator, whom he pointedly referred to as “Ciavarella” without any first name or honorific title: “Your Honor, this pathway walked by Michael is in stark contrast to the road traveled by Ciavarella. As Ciavarella continued to deny responsibility for his actions and the disastrous consequences of the same, Michael accepted it. As Ciavarella made public statements antagonizing the juveniles and antagonizing the public who were hurt by his criminal conduct, Michael remained quiet, with the hope that his silence would somehow begin the healing process. Your Honor, as Ciavarella challenged the government, the court, and the public concerning his criminal conduct, Michael challenged himself to understand why he committed these crimes. He also met with the government, forfeited his pension, and offered to forfeit any remaining asset that he could to pay restitution.”

  Next, Conahan, his hands shaking slightly, read from his typed statement: “Your honor, this has been a long road for me. It has been difficult, embarrassing, damaged my reputation beyond repair. I’ve lost everything that I worked for my entire life, and I’m about to go to prison. Your honor, I deserve these consequences because of what I’ve done.

  “First, please allow me to apologize to the children and the families of the children that appeared in juvenile court in Luzerne County. You are the vulnerable people of our society and are entitled to have decisions based upon what is in your best interests. I let you down the most. My actions undermined your faith in the system and contributed to the great difficulty in your lives. As the president judge, I owed you better. I’m grateful that the Supreme Court overturned your findings of delinquency and expunged your records. I am sorry you were victimized.”

  For five more minutes, Conahan apologized to the citizens of Luzerne County and every group affected by the scheme: “The system was not corrupt, I was corrupt. I did not perform my duties as I should. I did not have integrity.”

  Houser rose from the prosecutors’ table and agreed with Gelso there were a number of factors that weighed in favor of leniency for Conahan. “In contrast to Mark Ciavarella, Mr. Conahan has, in fact, accepted responsibility. Your Honor must consider the need for the sentence imposed to reflect the seriousness of the offense, to promote respect for the law, to provide just punishment for the offense, and to afford adequate deterrence to criminal conduct. The serious offense committed by Mr. Conahan warrants a serious prison sentence. To afford adequate deterrence to others, the government asks the court to impose a prison sentence that sends a clear message that when a person abuses one of the highest and most trusted positions in our society for criminal conduct, for personal gain, he must pay a very dear price with many years of his life spent behind bars.”

  Before sentencing Conahan, Kosik said he had read the former judge’s psychological report. Kosik cleared his throat and raised his voice an octave: “One sister told the psychologist, ‘Michael was like his father, he sees a lot of gray.’ And that’s a very important word. Another sister more succinctly said that he also sees a lot of gray. She alluded to the fact that when her father was mayor, there was an occasion where he was charged with some ethical violation, which he didn’t consider an ethical violation, and couldn’t understand why people considered it an ethical violation, because he was awarding a contract to a friend, because he thought that friend’s work would benefit the community. She said their father never understood this. He couldn’t see what the problem was. ‘In some ways, I think Mike looked at the juvenile center in the same way, in that everyone was going to benefit and that no one was going to get hurt.’

  “I don’t exclude myself when I say that is one of the greatest dangers of public office,” Kosik said, “particularly if we serve in that public office for a period of time. We conclude that different standards seem to apply to us than to the average person on the street. We see that day after day after day, and it’s not uncommon in this area.

  “When I was a child, those practices were accepted. A school board member could have coal delivered to his home, even if it was being paid for by the school board, people were aware of that and they said, ‘Well, he’s not getting any salary, and in those days, it was perfectly all right.’ It’s the gray area, in my mind, that led this defendant to his fate today.”

  Kosik then peered directly at Conahan: “A lot has been said about this case, and there’s no point to extending it or attempting to lecture a defendant who sat in a role similar to this one, and he knows what my job is, and I suppose I’ll have to do it.

  “So pursuant to the Sentencing Reform Act, it is the judgment of the court that the defendant is committed to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons for a term of 210 months”—Conahan blanched at the defense table as hope became a doused fire—“We find the defendant has an ability to pay a fine, so it’s ordered that he pay to the clerk of court the sum of $20,100, consisting of a special assessment of $100 due immediately and a fine of $20,000 payable to the clerk and interest is waived. Further, that the Defendant shall make restitution in the amount of $874,167.”

  The entire proceeding took only thirty-one minutes. For a few seconds, Conahan stood by himself, sad and lonely. Then federal marshals took the fifty-nine-year-old former judge into custody. He was entered into the federal inmate database as prisoner 15009-067. Before going to the Philadelphia holding center to await assignment, he was allowed to say good-bye to his family and friends. The courtroom was empty within fifteen minutes.

  Three days after Christmas 2011, Robert Powell reported to a minimum security federal prison in Pensacola to start an eighteen-month sentence for his role in the kids-for-cash conspiracy. Robert Mericle faced twelve to eighteen months in prison for lying to federal investigators, but his sentencing was delayed because he was expected to testify in another, unrelated public corruption case.

  10

  THE HEARINGS

  A few weeks after it was authorized by the state legislature in 2009, the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice was formed and making plans to investigate Luzerne County’s juvenile justice scandal. Its goal was to recommend reforms to prevent recurrences there and elsewhere. It was a remarkably able, industrious group that included a state judge, two county juvenile judges, a magisterial district judge, a prosecutor from Philadelphia, a public defender from Philadelphia, a victims’ rights advocate from Erie, a juvenile justice researcher from Pittsburgh, a former county commissioner, the district attorney of rural Susquehanna County, and a former president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association.

  The chairman was John M. Cleland, a judge on the Pennsylvania Superior Court, a silver-haired, wizened, and wise intermediate appellate tribunal official. The commission held its first hearing in Harrisburg on October 14, 2009, in the Pennsylvania Judicial Center, a handsome nine-story limestone building that had opened the previous year to accommodate state courts and administrative offices. This hearing, like the others that would follow, was carried live by PCN, Pennsylvania C-SPAN. Cleland, flanked on either side by five fellow commission members, made an opening statement:

  This morning our Commission begins its public hearings to assess the breathtaking collapse of the juvenile justice system in Luzerne County. Two judges stand criminally charged for conduct that had the unmistakable effect of harming children. Whether they are guilty or innocent of any specific criminal charge brought by the United States Attorney is not for this Commission to decide. But there is little doubt that their conduct, whether criminal or not, had disastrous consequences for the juvenile justice system that must be understood and prevented from happening again. Our concern, however, is not only the action of two Luzerne County judges. Our concern is also the inaction of others. Inaction by judges, prosecutors, public defenders, the defense bar
, public officials and private citizens—those who knew but failed to speak; those who saw but failed to act.

  One of the first witnesses was state Senator Lisa Baker, a Republican from Luzerne County and sponsor of the legislation that created the commission, who cited an “atmosphere of intimidation that permeated the courtroom and the courthouse.” However she added that the judicial breakdown was not an aberration: “We cannot write off this as a horrible situation unlikely to recur. The lesson is that someone has to keep an eye on things. As the public understands the current situation, the Supreme Court, at the top of the pyramid of the unified judicial system, does not have the capacity to keep watch over sixty-seven county courthouses. The state bureaucracy does not have time to sift through whatever data is being produced to check for warning flags, insufficiencies, and inaccuracies. Do we really want a commonwealth where we rigorously track every dollar that moves through casinos, but where we casually lose track of the constitutional rights of thousands of kids?”

  The main witness was Judge Muroski, who outlined the conspiracy and described his clash with Conahan over funding for dependency court and his subsequent demotion in 2005. As he recited the details, the expressions on the commission members’ faces went from anger to disbelief to shock. They appeared most distressed when Muroski told them of the mainstream support for Ciavarella’s zero-tolerance policies: “At the beginning of every school year, he spoke at assemblies held in most school districts within Luzerne County and, in effect, promised institutional placement for school-related infractions. He was true to his word and became even more popular when he followed through with placements sometimes for minimal offenses. In attempting to analyze the alleged, ever-increasing placements, I have found that pressure for placements by school administrators of allegedly disruptive students is not uncommon; however, with Ciavarella very little encouragement was necessary. A lot of people admired what Ciavarella was doing. Many people knew how quick these proceedings were, but they supported them. School administrators, teachers, and police supported and applauded Ciavarella’s efforts to get disruptive youths out of the classroom and off the streets.”