Kids for Cash Read online

  Muroski was tense, and there was a wrinkled edge of stress between his eyes, which were puffy and sleep-deprived. His testimony seemed to galvanize the commission. They had read about the scandal in the newspapers and in a briefing book, but here was a live person sitting in front of them telling the story from the perspective of someone who had been there. Indeed, several commission members pressed Muroski on why he and other Luzerne County judges hadn’t done more to stop Conahan and Ciavarella. “We knew there was something not right,” he said. “But the scheme was so contrived and had so many labyrinths that at first we didn’t know money was involved. Our main concern was the high incarceration rate.” When the possibility of financial misdeeds began to emerge, Muroski said there was “disbelief” on the part of his colleagues: “They thought, ‘That really can’t be.’” Muroski said the nepotism in the courtroom itself provided a “protective shield” for Conahan and Ciavarella.

  For the next nine months the commission members held hearings and meetings and then came up with forty-three recommendations for legal and procedural changes. But in the process they heard some astonishing testimony from officials directly responsible for the breakdown of justice in Luzerne County. It was an orgy of denial that had everything except a straight answer. Always, there was the unmistakable sound of the buck being passed.

  Among the first witnesses was David W. Lupas, who was district attorney for much of Ciavarella’s tenure—from 2001 to 2007. Lupas replaced Ciavarella as the juvenile judge in 2008, and in his opening testimony he outlined the reforms he had set in place, including a requirement for on-the-record explanations of the consequences of waiving the right to a lawyer. Lupas’s appearance was one of the critical points of the entire inquiry, but he seemed indifferent to the surroundings and the situation, like a prize-winning sheep at a county fair. He appeared unaware that on his watch thousands of adolescents had been locked up, often for minor crimes after hearings in which they were effectively denied lawyers. None of it seemed to pertain to him.

  Commission member Dwayne D. Woodruff, a former Pittsburgh Steeler cornerback who is now a juvenile court judge, noted that more than half of the children brought before Ciavarella did not have lawyers. “Would you expect your assistant DAs to come to you with that?” he asked.

  “No one came to me,” Lupas said.

  Woodruff pressed on. “I understand that they didn’t, but would you expect them to?”

  “On its face as you’re saying it, yes. But I think I can understand, like I explained the situation with the written colloquy, where perhaps they didn’t perceive that. Again, I’m only trying to put myself in their mind, but perhaps they didn’t see that so much as being a deprivation of their right to a waiver because they were waiving it, although they were doing it in writing not on the record by an oral colloquy from the judge. So perhaps they didn’t see the need to raise it. I don’t know. I’m only surmising.”

  Woodruff looked away, bewildered.

  Another juvenile judge on the commission, John C. Uhler of York County, asked if the juvenile court was considered “kiddie court” and less important than adult court. Lupas replied: “I don’t know if it was a lesser court. There may have been some of those attitudes. Unfortunately, I see some of those attitudes today as a judge. There are limited resources. I guess there were times, because of lack of resources, that it maybe didn’t get the priority maybe that it should have.”

  Cleland, marinating in impatience, pressed Lupas on how he could have been unaware of what was transpiring in Ciavarella’s courtroom: “Your testimony was that you never heard it discussed among any of your assistant DAs, defense lawyers, public defenders, or anyone involved in the system. A case here, a case there, maybe. But thousands of cases over year after year after year three days a week of juvenile hearings, and no assistant district attorney, public defender, or defense lawyer ever raised a question? Now, either there was incredible incompetence, which I find it hard to believe among that many lawyers and professionals, or there was an awful lot of intimidation about reporting and discussing what was going on. Which was it?”

  Lupas, eyes glassy with indifference, answered. “There were times—not as often, but there were times where perhaps an Assistant DA was disappointed with the outcome of a case because he went the other way and maybe dismissed a petition or threw something out. So—but it was—it was basically he—Ciavarella ran the courtroom. That was—that was the way it was.”

  Next came Jacqueline Musto Carroll, who succeeded Lupas as district attorney and served as his first assistant for seven years before that. She acknowledged that she, like Lupas, had never set foot in juvenile court. Kenneth Horoho, a former president of the Pennsylvania Bar Association, went through a litany of questions trying to determine why Musto Carroll was not aware of the long-standing problems and finally ended by saying, “The bottom line is that zero tolerance went unchallenged by your office.” Musto Carroll said that she was not aware that more than half of the teenagers going before Ciavarella were unrepresented.

  “If the purpose of this commission is to make sure this never happens again,” Musto Carroll said, “and I don’t mean to be smart about this, but you tell me how not to have a judge who’s a criminal? That’s the bottom line here.”

  Cleland, his face torqued with anger, interrupted: “You report them, Ms. Musto Carroll! You report them. That’s the answer. That’s the simple answer!”

  But Musto Carroll, unintimidated, kept digging a deeper hole. Under questioning from Robert L. Listenbee, chief of the juvenile unit of the Defender Association of Philadelphia, she blurted, “I need to be completely honest here. I have heard many cases that say that Judge Ciavarella—what he did was helpful, and he saved a lot of these kids’ lives. Now, I know that that is not popular, and I know that no one wants to hear that. But I have heard people say, here’s a Ciavarella success story. The kid was out of control. The parents brought him into the courtroom. Or the teacher brought him into the courtroom and said, do something with this child, and he sent the child away. I’ve heard stories where the kids have joined—joined wrestling teams at these different facilities, have gone on to get scholarships and have college degrees and come out—have come out of those institutions and are better for it.”

  Listenbee interjected. “Ms. Carroll, one of the fundamental issues is that you are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of Pennsylvania. The constitutional rights of these children is what we’re talking about here.”

  Musto Carroll was reprimanded several times for rambling, long-winded answers, and the commission was particularly dismayed by her insistence that the main issue was the kickbacks rather than the denial of juveniles’ rights. When Woodruff pressed her on her lack of awareness of what was happening in juvenile court, she said: “But—but I know you don’t want me to say more than I need to, but let me just say this. Even if all these colloquies and the law and everything was followed in the courtroom and he was a procedural stickler for rules, even if that had all occurred, is there anyone saying on the other hand that he wouldn’t still have gotten kickbacks from the people who built this PA Child Care?”

  “Ms. Carroll, I understand,” Woodruff said.

  “I think that’s an important question, sir. And I . . .”

  “I do not agree with that. Because my position is that without the kickbacks there are rights being violated of these juveniles.”

  Thomas J. Killino, who worked under Lupas and Musto Carroll as an assistant district attorney, said he took the job in 2004 because he wasn’t getting enough courtroom work in his private civil practice and wanted to get trial experience. Was juvenile court considered important? “It certainly didn’t appear to be number 1 on the list of things going on to be very honest with you.” Was he bothered by the judge’s failure to advise children on waivers of counsel? “I came into a very fast-paced environment. I observed my colleagues handle that environment in the same way as I came to handle
it. And, again, it was an established practice by the court. And the trust factor there that if the court is satisfied in proceeding in that manner that was the manner it proceeded.” Did he ever question the placement of a single juvenile? “You’re trusting that the court is looking at that file, that the evaluation is performed by whatever is required based on the specific circumstance of the evaluation.”

  Commission members were further exasperated by testimony from Sandra Brulo, who headed the county probation office through much of Ciavarella’s tenure. County probation officers under her supervision obtained the illegal waivers of counsel from juveniles and their parents outside Ciavarella’s courtroom. Parents would be met at elevators and urged to sign unsanctioned waiver-of-counsel forms because their child’s offense was minor and would probably result in probation. Brulo was questioned by Mosee, a deputy Philadelphia district attorney, who asked: “Don’t you think that it’s problematic for a probation officer to go over a legal document with a juvenile whose very liberty is in jeopardy?”

  “We did what the judge instructed us to do,” Brulo replied. She added that she had concerns about Ciavarella’s actions, had brought them to her immediate supervisor, but had not received a response. Ronald P. Williams, one of three non-lawyers on the commission, threw up his hands and asked, “Don’t you think you should have taken it further when you didn’t get any satisfaction from your supervisor?”

  “I took it to my boss,” Brulo replied. “That’s as far as I thought I should go.”

  Brulo was not implicated in the bribery scheme, but she had already pleaded guilty to altering a court record involved in the scandal. She changed the document to indicate she had recommended probation for a juvenile when she actually had recommended placement. Brulo was subsequently sentenced to two years’ probation.

  Basil G. Russin, who had been chief public defender in Luzerne County since 1980, painted a picture for the commission of overwhelming caseloads, inadequate offices, and hand-me-down computers. He was interrogated by Mosee, who asked: “I know that you’re a bright guy, probably a good attorney. You’re not a chief public defender for the money. You’re a chief public defender because you want to do something for kids and for people who have been charged with whatever in our system; isn’t that right?”

  “That’s my purpose,” Russin agreed.

  “Well, as the chief public defender why wouldn’t you confront a mishandling, a misapprehension of something like zero tolerance?”

  “Well, the dispositions in juvenile court are within the judge’s discretion. The judge can decide what he wants to do with kids, and this was the way he did things. This was the way he disposed of cases. Unlike in the adult system where we have guidelines and reasons and so forth, in juvenile court the judge can just say, you’re going to Pennsylvania Child Care, and off you go.”

  Mosee squirmed, his patience slipping away, but he rallied and asked why zero tolerance was tolerated. Russin answered with rising exasperation, “Because everybody loved it. Everybody loved it. The schools absolutely loved it. They got rid of every bad kid in their school. When I was in school if you threw a spitball, maybe you went to the principal’s office and sat for a couple periods. Last couple years if you threw a spitball, they got the police, and you ended up in juvenile court and got sent away. Schools got rid of all their problems. Parents, parents who had problems with the kid at home, they called the police. Police said, you want us to take him away? Sure. I can’t control the kid anymore. Away the kid would go. Parents loved it. Police loved it. They knew every arrest they made the kid would get sent away. And despite what you heard this morning, the DA loved it because they were getting convictions. They were never losing cases.”

  Mosee, brows down in anger, asked if Russin knew that young clients of his attorneys were being sent to PA Child Care merely to be evaluated by Dr. Vita.

  “I’m aware that he would detain people for evaluations. I didn’t know what those evaluations entailed. I assumed the psychological workup,” Russin replied.

  “Did you find that problematic?”

  “Did I? Certainly that could have been done as an outpatient. Everybody that came before him went away.”

  “I don’t want to editorialize again, but that meant that the juveniles’ liberty was taken away from them just so that they could be evaluated?”

  “That’s correct. It was very troubling, but he’s the judge. You have to assume the judge, this is his philosophy. He’s honest. I’ve always respected judges. Maybe that’s a false assumption, but I have the utmost respect for the judicials, no matter on what level. And if he said you’re going away until this evaluation’s done, I have to respect him that he’s an honest person.”

  Jason Legg, the small-town district attorney on the commission, took over and followed up on Russin’s earlier statement that his office didn’t pursue many cases on the assumption that there was a proper written waiver of counsel.

  “Do the rules allow for a written waiver of counsel?” Legg asked.

  “I’m sure they don’t.”

  “Okay. So how could it be a proper written waiver of counsel?”

  “I said it would be a written waiver. Now, whether it’s proper within the rules or not would be decided at a future time. . . .”

  “But you had watched proceedings and saw that there were no oral colloquies?”

  “Oh, I knew that. There was no oral colloquy.”

  “And you knew the rules didn’t allow for written waivers?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “So at that point in time you knew whatever was occurring wasn’t proper?”

  “It wasn’t proper. There’s no question it wasn’t proper.”

  “And is it fair to say that that assumption was motivated, at least in large part, by your desire to keep your caseload down? You said you don’t solicit business?”

  “I keep my caseload down. I keep it so we can at least represent people, manage it.”

  “Would it be fair to say that you really didn’t want to know what was going on?”

  “No, that’s not fair.”

  “Would it be fair to say that you should have known what was going on?”

  “In hindsight I should have known.”

  The commission heard from Judge Arthur E. Grim, who had vacated some 3,000 of Ciavarella’s adjudications. He told the panel that justice had been perverted in Luzerne County “in ways that I would never have dreamed possible,” and children were trapped in a scheme that grew out of “unfettered power, greed, opportunity and intimidation.”

  Grim defended his decision to recommend expungement of all cases despite the estimate that only about 25 percent of the placements were in the two centers connected directly to the kickbacks: “Any time that there is an obscene amount of money paid to a judge or judges by a facility, in this case a juvenile justice detention center, there is not only the appearance of impropriety, there is, in fact, such impropriety that it would make it impossible for this individual to be impartial. There was never any disclosure, never any indication of any conflict, perceived or otherwise, by this judge in any of his deliberations or any of his proceedings. And yet, although not every child was sent to Pennsylvania Child Care, a good number were. Now, does that also cloud his determinations with regard to other proceedings? In my opinion it clearly—it clearly does. You can’t be just a little bit unethical. You’re either an ethical judge or you’re not.”

  But there was moving testimony from Carol L. Lavery, the head of the state’s victim advocate program, who called attention to “the original victims”—meaning those who had suffered at the hands of juveniles who came before Ciavarella. She said this was a group that had been overlooked in the anguish over the scandal, and many of them were distressed that their attackers would have their records expunged. Lavery said she had talked to parents whose children had been victimized by other juveniles:

  They said, “We stepped up and did the right thing. We wanted to make cer
tain there was a record of this event in the event that the defendant assaulted someone else in the future. Now there will be no record of the assault on our child. Now this individual can be near our child.” They had felt that the system had worked for them and their child. They’re no longer sure that that child is safe at school.

  They asked, what about the victim? That same sense of futility has been echoed many times from parents of child victims who have reached out.

  To each of these parents, their efforts to do the right thing in seeking justice in the juvenile justice system now seems to have been in vain. Many of the victims talked about the fact that the juvenile did have an attorney present, and many talked about learning in the courtroom that the child had a previous history of criminal behavior. For these victims, as well as those who said that the juvenile was never placed in a treatment facility, they find the fact that the cases are being vacated and expunged as incomprehensible.

  One mother spoke about her child who was severely beaten during an attack at school by a group of juveniles who had notified other students ahead of time to come and watch the assault. The mother felt the juveniles did not receive a harsh enough sentence. For their cases to be expunged, she said, what does that say to my child and every other child that is assaulted or bullied? I hope someone takes into consideration the hurt, the fear, the pain my child had to endure at the hands of these juveniles that are very, very troubled juveniles.