WRITING & REPORTING » NEWS THE CITIZENS' VOICE, MONDAY, AUGUST 24, 2009
Rehabilitation of county's courts could become a statewide model for change
Luzerne County President Judge Chester B. Muroski set the precedent for change on a chilly Saturday afternoon in January — two days before a federal corruption probe erupted with charges against a pair of judges accused of using their administrative autonomy to profit from a lucrative kickback scheme.
Muroski met with the remaining judges and immediately departed from the long-standing state court policy that had enabled the accused jurists — former President Judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan — to gain unilateral control over the county court system.
Muroski, 69, the oldest and longest-serving member of the county bench, invited discussion and debate from his colleagues, encouraging a level of discourse that had been non-existent in the judiciary for nearly a decade.
Recovery Mission: More than six months after corruption cast a dark cloud over the Luzerne County court system, President Judge Chester B. Muroski and his colleagues are still working to regain public trust and ensure the court remains transparent for years to come.
Model Citizens: The democratic approach used to govern the Luzerne County court system in the wake of the corruption crisis could serve as a model for courts throughout the state.
Retention Deficit: With two judges facing retention, two new judges being elected, another a year from retirement and two seats in limbo, the current makeup of the court could shift dramatically in the next two years.
It was a radical shift and the beginning of a new egalitarian approach to leadership in the Luzerne County court system — a method that might one day serve as a model for courts throughout the state, the Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, Ronald D. Castille, said.
Castille said this month he would ask a state commission investigating the corruption scandal to explore “a more democratic way” to run the courts, incorporating checks and balances that would prevent other president judges from becoming what he described as “little Napoleons.”
Only a change in the state judicial code, which includes the policy defining the authority of a president judge, could curtail the potential for another courthouse dictator, Muroski and Luzerne County Judge Joseph J. Musto said.
“There’s absolutely no guarantee, unless the law were changed, that it would not revert back to the old system,” Musto said.
Problematic policy
For now, the same policy that fostered Ciavarella and Conahan’s autocracy remains in effect, allowing president judges in the state’s 59 other judicial districts “practically unfettered exercise of discretion and authority,” Musto said.
“I, as a judge, can appoint my staff, I can appoint a secretary, a law clerk, a tipstaff, but other than that, the president judge really has control over the entire system on his or her own, and doesn’t have to consult anyone,” Musto said.
Ciavarella, who served as president judge from 2007 until his resignation in January, and Conahan, who led the court system from 2002 through 2006, seldom consulted the other judges on major
issues, including contracts, appointments and judicial assignments, Muroski said.
Their decisions were inscrutable, and the only way they could have been removed from office without resigning was by a directive from the state Supreme Court.
“It puts you into a situation where power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” Muroski said.
At the same time Ciavarella and Conahan were running the court system, their kickback scheme thrived, federal prosecutors said.
Between 2003 and 2006, federal prosecutors said, Ciavarella and Conahan pocketed $2.6 million in payoffs for their support of a pair of juvenile detention centers: Pennsylvania Child Care in Pittston Township and Western Pa. Child Care in Butler County, north of Pittsburgh.
Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court for 12 years, habitually failed to inform defendants of their right to an attorney and jailed youths for the most minor offenses, federal prosecutors and juvenile advocates said.
Conahan forced the closure of a county-owned detention center in 2003 and asked county commissioners to fund an exclusive, 20-year agreement with Pennsylvania Child Care worth $58 million.
Ciavarella and Conahan pleaded guilty in February and last week asked a federal judge to reinstate plea agreements and 87-month prison sentences that had been rejected by the federal judge last month.
No president judge before Ciavarella and Conahan had ever abused his or her power so egregiously, Castille said.
“We’ve had some president judges step off the reservation a little where we had to reign them back in,” Castille said. “I’ve never seen anything like this.”
“I’ve never seen a judge who got a million-dollar bribe; I’ve never read about a judge who got a million-dollar bribe unless it was in some third-world country.”
Seeds of democracy
Muroski reiterated his commitment to democracy when he was sworn in as president judge, six days after the planning meeting where he and his colleagues launched their experiment in collective court administration.
“No president judge should ever again have the ability to act unilaterally to the detriment to the other members of the bench and the citizens of Luzerne County,” Muroski said during a solemn ceremony in the courthouse rotunda. “Our citizens deserve to have a judiciary above reproach, forthright with information and absolutely transparent.”
Muroski and the other judges said they are committed to keeping the court system that way forever, with or without a change to the state judicial code.
Muroski will leave the bench and the president judge position at the end of the year, when he reaches the mandatory retirement age of 70.
He said the public, stung once by Ciavarella and Conahan, would vilify a successor who “attempted to significantly alter” the way the court operates.
“It’s going to be very difficult for anybody who is the president judge to go back,” Muroski said. “It can’t happen. The media won’t let it happen and I don’t think the citizens are going to let it happen. They just won’t stand for the way things used to be.”
In counties like Luzerne, with eight judicial seats or more, the judges elect a president judge to a five-year term. In smaller counties, the longest-serving judge is appointed president judge and can hold the position indefinitely.
Two new elected judges and as many as six current members of the bench will comprise the candidate pool and the voting bloc when they choose Muroski’s successor in January.
The three candidates campaigning for the two open seats — William H. Amesbury of Wilkes-Barre, Tina Polachek Gartley of Plains Township, and Richard Hughes of Mountain Top — said they would only support a president judge who continued in Muroski’s democratic mold.
Hughes, a Republican candidate, said he would look for a “firm commitment” from any judge striving to be president judge that they continue in the current system and remain open to ideas that will make the courts “as transparent as possible.”
Any variation from current operating procedure would have a chilling effect on the judges’ effort to restore public confidence, Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr., said.
Olszewski and Judge Thomas F. Burke Jr. face a retention vote in November.
“This is a long, sustained, developing effort and all of these things that we’ve done need to be continued to regain the public trust,” Olszewski said. “This does not happen overnight and it’s not going to happen overnight. It’s going to take time.”
Additional fallout from the ongoing corruption probe, including charges against another judge or court official, “would be devastating,” Muroski said.
“It would really take us back,” Muroski said. “The hope is that nothing being done now would bring us attention for any kind of irregularity.”
Eyes wide shut
Castille first broached the idea of using Luzerne County’s courthouse democracy as a model for other counties in a letter to Muroski in March.
“By necessity, we must depend on the leadership of our president judges,” Castille continued, “but the former situation in Luzerne County demonstrates that there may be further effective action that the (state) Supreme Court can take to prevent such a disastrous situation from occurring in the future elsewhere.”
The situation in Luzerne County evolved out of a perfect storm of corruption and conceit. The officials who were supposed to be the state Supreme Court’s “eyes and ears” in the court system, the president judge and the court administrator, were able to keep their own wrongdoing hidden.
Ciavarella and Conahan, bound by the judicial code to act as liaisons with the state Supreme Court, failed to disclose their involvement in the corruption scheme, Castille said.
Court administrator William T. Sharkey Sr., a Conahan cousin who pleaded guilty in March to embezzling more than $70,000 in seized gambling proceeds from the courthouse, also remained silent.
“They’re supposed to be our eyes and ears in the county, telling us what’s going on,” Castille said. “Both of the people that we depend upon in every county, they were both corrupt.”
