Pennsylvania AG says email linked to current state justice had racial and misogynistic jokes
Minutes after her arraignment on a new perjury charge on Thursday, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane alleged that an email account linked to a state supreme court justice was used to send and receive “racial, misogynistic pornography” on state computers.
The allegations concern Justice J. Michael Eakin, report the Legal Intelligencer, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Allentown Morning Call.
Kane said she didn’t know how many emails contained inappropriate material, but she had turned over more than 1,500 emails for review. She said she gave the emails to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the Judicial Conduct Board and the state Ethics Commission. The supreme court has hired the Pittsburgh law firm Del Sole Cavanaugh Stroyd to review the emails.
Del Sole Cavanaugh previously represented Kane when she challenged a grand jury investigating her, according to the Legal Intelligencer report. Kane was charged in August with lying about a grand jury leak, charged with perjury in September, and charged Oct. 1 with a new count of perjury for allegedly lying about her secrecy obligation to a grand jury operating before she took office.
Kane spokesman Chuck Ardo told the Philadelphia Inquirer that the recently discovered emails were from an account using the alias “John Smith.” He told the Legal Intelligencer that the inappropriate emails had been previously reviewed by the supreme court and “I think she has a sense that some of the inappropriate content didn’t get the attention.”
Former Chief Justice Ronald Castille told the Legal Intelligencer he believed Eakin had already been cleared of sending any offensive emails. The review found inappropriate messages were sent from a personal account by a different justice, Seamus McCaffery, who resigned in October.
Kane said one of the emails linked to Eakin was “a joke about a woman who was beaten by her husband, and the punch line is that she should just shut up.” Another, she said, said 30 percent of female murder victims were killed by husband or boyfriends. “The punch line is ‘Well, 30 percent of them should have just shut the expletive up,’ ” Kane said.
Related article:
ABAJournal.com: “Pennsylvania justice in lewd email scandal said he ‘was not going down alone,’ second justice says”
