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  Then, on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, two seniors at Columbine High School in Colorado shot to death twelve students and a teacher. The response in schools across the nation was to impose additional security measures such as metal detectors, computerized student identification cards, locker searches by drug-sniffing dogs, and see-through backpacks. In Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Mark Ciavarella rode this tsunami of public opinion and not only embraced zero tolerance, but bracketed it and gave it a coefficient.

  Zero tolerance is a kind of push-button justice. It is justice without thought, or nuance. Any thoughtful person knows that, both in and out of the courtroom, the truth is not simple; it has many nooks and crannies. But zero tolerance is a one-size-fits-all prescription that quickly brought about absurdities everywhere it was adopted. Two elementary school boys in New Jersey were charged with terrorism for playing cops and robbers with paper guns. An eight-year-old in Georgia was suspended for bringing to school a pair of cuticle scissors she used to unwrap her breakfast. A Florida boy was arrested for passing gas on a school bus.

  Nevertheless, there was a widespread belief, fueled by the media, that the nation was threatened by a new kind of adolescent—a “super predator” needing to be brought under control with punitive measures. Legislators and school directors expanded zero tolerance to include other student misbehavior—class disruption, truancy, profanity, and dozens of other vague offenses such as “insubordination.” But rather than end school violence, zero tolerance merely pushed children out of school and into the juvenile justice system. And this went against a mountain of research showing that once juveniles get enmeshed in the criminal justice system, they tend to stay in the system and become adult offenders and expensive burdens to taxpayers. In fact, one recipe for a career criminal is take a troubled adolescent and toss him into jail with real criminals. The American Bar Association went on record in 2001 in opposition to zero tolerance on the grounds that it violates the civil liberties of children while failing to be an effective force against juvenile crime. Judges, defense lawyers, and even many prosecutors came to agree that zero tolerance was counterproductive. Pennsylvania avoided many of the excesses of zero tolerance with a system of “balanced and restorative justice” that sought to hold juveniles accountable for their misdeeds while simultaneously providing treatment and rehabilitation designed to make them productive citizens rather than social encumbrances. But in Luzerne County, Ciavarella was going his own way, and no one was stopping him. Indeed, when Ciavarella received a video presentation on balanced and restorative justice that had been prepared for juvenile judges, he tossed it in the trash can after reading the title.

  At the invitation of admiring school administrators, he started making regular appearances in school assemblies, where he got attention not with judicial temperance but with a set of bared teeth. Teachers and students remember that his standard talk included these words: “Do you know who I am? You never want to come in front of me. You should be frightened of me. But I’m fair. If it’s your first time and it’s nothing major, I’ll give you a break. If you come in front of me a second time, I’ll throw the book at you.” Although his appearances were unfitting behavior for a judge, Ciavarella stoutly defended them. Indeed, he seemed to believe that had he just been allowed to give his talk before the students of Columbine High School, the massacre could have been avoided. Students’ response ranged from lukewarm to hostile, but the adults at school—administrators, teachers’ unions, and many teachers—were delighted. Many infractions that were normally dealt with reluctantly by principals and superintendents were now being handled quickly by Ciavarella. “Everybody loved him,” said Judge Chester B. Muroski, Luzerne County’s longtime family court judge. “He was putting bad kids away. That’s how it was perceived.”

  At some point in his early years on the juvenile bench, Ciavarella decided it was time to replace the county-owned juvenile detention center, which was known as the River Street Center. The facility was mainly used as a holding facility to temporarily house juveniles who were either awaiting court hearings or awaiting placement in long-term detention accommodations. It was an ugly, red-brick, rust-scabbed structure built as a women’s prison in the 1930s, and it was far from an ideal resource. Ciavarella enlisted Conahan’s support, and the pair worked behind the scenes to try to force the county to build a new center. When that didn’t work, Ciavarella went public in April 2000, casting himself as an advocate for better conditions for the troubled youth of Luzerne County. “The place is old,” he said. “It suffers from leaky pipes that we can’t get to because they’re buried behind two-foot-thick concrete walls and the interior is infested with cockroaches and rodents.” When county commissioners—the three elected officials charged with overall responsibility for running the county—resisted the idea, Ciavarella turned in May 2000 to the biggest private developer in northeastern Pennsylvania—his lifelong friend, Rob Mericle.

  •••

  While still a twenty-year-old undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania’s prestigious Wharton School in 1983, Robert K. Mericle felt the spur of the moment dig into his flank when Cabbage Patch Kids dolls became a national obsession. Mericle contacted Coleco, the manufacturer, and ordered ten thousand of them, which he then resold to eager retailers. It was risky, but it paid off. He estimates he made a fast $75,000 on the deal; but this would be pocket change compared to the deals he would work over the next twenty-five years to become northeastern Pennsylvania’s number 1 commercial real estate developer.

  He was already out of the toy business when he graduated from Penn in 1985 with a degree in economics and returned to his native Wilkes-Barre, where his parents operated an old-fashioned hardware store. He founded Mericle Properties, passed the exam for a general contractor’s license, and studied local building codes and zoning ordinances. He had an extraordinary knack for paying the right price for the right building at the right time. His first big project was the purchase of fifteen rundown homes in Wilkes-Barre, which he rebuilt and sold at a profit. With these proceeds he bought an old shoe factory, which became a Sallie Mae Bank that handled student loans. He built shopping centers, business parks, and industrial parks. Typically, Mericle built a facility and then got tenants to sign long-term leases. His name—appearing in huge letters on signs all over northeastern Pennsylvania—became synonymous with quality construction, job creation, and economic development. Within fifteen years, his website would claim that Mericle Properties was responsible for ninety-one buildings in which some ten thousand people were employed.

  Mericle was brilliant and willing to take risks, but he also was helped immensely by state grants and loans and local tax incentives. In pursuit of this largesse, it is not surprising that he became a major contributor to political campaigns. Between 1998 and 2008, his donations to politicians totaled nearly $445,000. Most of the money went to Democrats, including Governor Edward Rendell (2003–2011), who received $110,000, and Bob Mellow, a powerful state senator, who got $117,000. This money was not wasted. For example, Mericle received $25 million in state grants and loans to develop a warehouse complex during Rendell’s tenure.

  Mericle also made contributions to his friend and attorney, Mark Ciavarella, when Ciavarella ran for judge in 1995 ($1,000) and for retention as judge in 2005 ($2,500). Mericle had known Ciavarella since he was sixteen and considered Ciavarella to be a “big brother.” While he was in private practice, Ciavarella represented Rob Mericle and Mericle Properties in a number of legal matters. While he was still in college, Mericle began giving Christmas presents to Ciavarella. Indeed, the first gift was fifteen Cabbage Patch dolls. By the time Ciavarella became a judge in 1995, Mericle was a rich man. He began giving his friend the judge travel certificates worth $5,000. But this became cumbersome and so Mericle decided to let Ciavarella decide where he wanted to travel, simply placing $5,000 cash in an envelope, which he tucked into a travel magazine. This went on year after year until 2009.

  Thus when Ciavare
lla summoned Mericle to his chambers on May 3, 2000, to discuss building a new juvenile detention center for Luzerne County, there was an overlay of familiarity and cordiality to the talks. When Mericle expressed an interest in the project, Ciavarella put him in touch with another rags-to-riches local boy—forty-one-year-old Robert J. Powell, the son of a West Hazleton brick plant worker. Powell had gotten into St. Francis College in Loretto, Pennsylvania, on a basketball scholarship and then worked his way though the New England Law School at night. He returned to northeastern Pennsylvania in 1987 and within a few years established himself by winning product liability and personal injury cases. His six-foot-three frame and booming foghorn voice made him a formidable courtroom figure. In the mid-1990s, he parlayed political connections and generous campaign donations into lucrative municipal finance work. As he won seven-figure verdicts, his reputation and wealth grew. Powell became a perennial all-star on Super Lawyers, a national rating service.

  Given the county’s continued refusal to provide money for a new facility, the two judges, Powell and Mericle, decided secretly in early 2001 that Powell would build a private detention center and then sell or lease it back to the county. For the project Powell took on a partner, Gregory Zappala, a Pittsburgh attorney-businessman and the son of former Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Stephen A. Zappala. Mericle was assigned the task of looking for a site. The Powell-Zappala entity was named PA Child Care, and in July 2001 the firm sent the Luzerne County commissioners an unsolicited proposal: We’ll build a new juvenile detention center and lease it to you for $37 million over thirty years.

  But the commissioners balked at the PA Child Care proposal, still preferring to use the existing River Street facility. Meanwhile, Powell brought Mike Conahan into the negotiations to help with financing. The judge had a close relationship with the Minersville Safe Deposit Bank and Trust Company in nearby Schuylkill County, and a deal was struck. Using money lent by the bank, Powell bought a tract of land in September 2001, in an industrial park in Pittston, a few miles northeast of Wilkes-Barre. Mericle Construction submitted the low bid for the project, and the contract was awarded.

  Mericle was pleased, and in July 2001 he went to the Luzerne County Courthouse to see his friend Ciavarella. There was good news in his eyes. The construction budget for the juvenile detention project included a “finder’s fee” of $997,600, which was roughly 10 percent of the overall cost. “If anyone should get this fee, it should be you, Mark,” Mericle said. He assured the judge that this was a standard industry practice. Ciavarella claimed he took this advice to heart and did not scruple over whether the proposed payment could be construed as a bribe or a kickback. Instead, Ciavarella thanked his friend and former legal client for what he would later describe as “manna from heaven.” He decided that Conahan should share in this largesse, and he ran to his chambers. Conahan, he said, threw a pencil in the air in joy. “I can’t believe that,” Conahan rejoiced. “That’s one hell of a friend.” For Ciavarella, the coming money was especially timely, for he had fallen deeply into six-figure debt, apparently in the effort to keep pace with his wealthier friends, the Powells, the Mericles, and the Conahans.

  One obstacle remained. Ground could not be broken for the project without a green light from the elected county commissioners. But the land had been purchased and the contract to build the center had been signed—and Conahan had no intention of giving up on the project. On Christmas Eve 2001, Powell and Conahan drove to the undeveloped site of the new center for an inspection. According to Powell, the judge said, “When we get this thing done, we’re going to have to do something to take care of Mark.” Powell said he was surprised by the remark because from his vantage point the project was still very much in doubt; but he claimed it was his first indication that the judges were expecting to be compensated for their efforts on behalf of the center. He says he was unaware of Mericle’s finder’s fee.

  Powell was having trouble lining up further financing for the project. And how were they going to get around the commissioners’ opposition? Conahan had the answers. For one thing, he had just been elected president judge by his fellow jurists, giving him broad supervisory authority over the entire Luzerne County Common Pleas Court. Less than a month after he became president judge on January 3, 2002, Conahan signed a secret “Placement Guarantee Agreement” with PA Child Care assuring that the court would pay annual rental installments of $1,314,000 to house juvenile offenders. This guarantee—that the center would have a steady stream of juveniles whose stays would be financed by state and county taxpayers—paved the way for the financing of the construction.

  Mericle began building the center immediately, and in October 2002 President Judge Conahan dropped the other shoe: He ordered the Juvenile Probation Department to stop sending young people to the county-owned River Street facility, effective December 31. Conahan and Ciaverella said the building was unfit for further use, even though the state Public Welfare Department had just inspected and renewed its license, and two other agencies—the state Labor and Industry Department and the Wilkes-Barre Health Department—had found it acceptable.

  To push the new center, which they were now acutely aware would bring them each at least $500,000, the two judges began a media campaign emphasizing the grievous conditions at River Street. In November, Conahan arranged a media tour of the facility that revealed cockroaches, leaky pipes, rusty sinks, and peeling paint. In an interview, Conahan said the building had no handicapped facilities and improper schooling, counseling, and treatment facilities. “The courts put the commissioners on notice well over a year ago,” he intoned. “The conditions are deplorable.” Then he allowed that he didn’t care what the county commissioners did so long as they replaced River Street. But he warned that he wouldn’t wait too much longer for the commissioners to act: “They have a job to run the county and protect taxpayers. We have a job to do, too—focusing on the safety and welfare of the juveniles up there. Sometimes the two jobs conflict.”

  Conahan waited less than a month before choking off funding for the county-operated juvenile center, effectively closing it and paving the way for PA Child Care to begin receiving juveniles when it opened in February. Despite their stated preference for sticking with the county-owned facility, the county commissioners went along with Conahan’s edict.

  In January, Conahan and Ciaverella began receiving their initial $997,000 finder’s fee, but the payments were concealed through a money-laundering scheme. Disguised as a broker’s fee, the cash went from Mericle to Powell and then disappeared into a befogged quagmire before reemerging into bank accounts controlled by Conahan and Ciavarella. Ciavarella received his first finder’s fee installment of $330,000 on January 28, 2003. When he paid off his debts, there was little left. But more money was on its way.

  PA Child Care’s forty-eight-bed juvenile detention center opened on Sathers Drive in Pittston Township on February 4, 2003. Hundreds of people attended the ceremonies, including Bob Powell, who was in a defensive mode because of murmurings of discontent about his involvement in the project and his vast political connections through various positions, including county planning commission solicitor. He said the new center had nothing to do with politics or undue influence or even making money. Rather, he said, he was inspired to build the center after talking to a man who was extremely fearful that his son was about to be placed in the River Street facility. “This was about the children,” Powell said.

  Neighbors were in a not-in-my-backyard state of mind. They complained that there were no public hearings for them to air opposition. Indeed, they said they didn’t even know the nature of the building that was going up in late 2002. Even the local zoning officer was bewildered, explaining that he signed PA Child Care’s application thinking it was for a recreational facility. “When I think ‘youth center,’ I think basketball and other activities like that,” he said.

  For many years, the Luzerne County Juvenile Probation Office had been a forgotten agency, housed in cramp
ed offices in the old River Street Detention Center. They operated without files, secretarial help, or a voice mail system. Now all that was changing under Ciavarella. When River Street closed, the probation offices would be moved to a county offices building in downtown Wilkes-Barre. So there were no objections when Ciavarella summoned all probation officers to his chambers late in 2002 and told them, “I want PA Child Care filled at all times, and I don’t care if we have to bankrupt the county to do it. Is that clear?”

  Three days after PA Child Care opened, Ciavarella expanded zero tolerance to require the automatic detention of any child who skipped school or violated probation. This provided an even larger pool of potential inmates for the new institution. The license for the now-closed River Street facility was returned to the state Public Welfare Department, which was puzzled by the receipt since it had just renewed its license and said that with some improvements it could become a safe and effective juvenile facility. But before it would reimburse the county for detentions at PA Child Care, the state required a ramping-up process to prepare it to receive juveniles. When Conahan learned that children were not immediately being sent to PA Child Care, he was furious and believed that the delay was the fault of Sandra Brulo, the Luzerne County juvenile probation director, who was summoned to Ciavarella’s office in late February.

  Ciavarella handed her his telephone and said “the Boss” was on the other end. “Judge Conahan began screaming at me and accused me of being responsible for the ramping-up limits,” she recalled later under oath. “He said Robert Powell had bills to pay and that the ramping limits were limiting the admissions.” Brulo told Conahan that she was not responsible for the delay in admissions. Conahan ordered her to file weekly reports with Ciavarella indicating the number of beds in use at PA Child Care. In turn, Brulo told probation officer Tom Lavan, who was responsible for placements, that PA Child Care was to be kept full at all times.