2 Pa. Judges to Resign & Serve Time in $2.6M Juvenile Detention Kickbacks Case
Two judges in Luzerne County, Penn., have reportedly agreed to plead guilty and resign from office in an ongoing federal investigation of $2.6 million that authorities say the judges were paid between 2003 and 2007 concerning local juvenile detention facilities.
Under the plea bargain, judges Mark Ciavarella Jr., 58, and Michael Conahan, 56, have also agreed to 87-month prison sentences, says U.S. Attorney Martin Carlson of the Middle District of Pennsylvania reports the Times Leader. Ciavarella is the county’s president judge, and Conahan is a retired senior judge who still hears cases there and elsewhere.
As detailed in another Times Leader article today, the two are accused by Carlson of “engaging in a scheme to defraud the public of their honest services and with conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service.”
According to the Associated Press, authorities say the two jurists took $2.6 million in kickbacks in exchange for steering juveniles into specific detention facilities. After a new juvenile detention facility was opened, “the county’s annual spending on juvenile placements spiraled from $2.7 million in 2002 to $7.3 million in 2004,” the news agency writes.
“Carlson further alleged Ciavarella and Conahan pressured the Luzerne County Juvenile Probation Department and juvenile probation officers to detains juveniles at the detention center, despite recommendations by juvenile probation officers that detention was not warranted,” the newspaper writes.
An attorney for Ciavarella says his client will not admit to all of the allegations made in the case against the judge, another Times Leader article notes.
