A state agency Wednesday escalated a clash over the confidentiality of misconduct complaints against two former Luzerne County judges, asking the state Supreme Court to block a state panel from questioning the agency and its witnesses about the complaints. The agency, the state Judicial Conduct Board, received an anonymous complaint accusing former judges Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and Michael T. Conahan of nepotism, cronyism and case-fixing, but kept it secret for nearly two years, until federal prosecutors requested a copy in June or July 2008, board member Edwin L. Klett told the panel earlier this month.
When pressed for detail, Klett and the board's chief counsel, Joseph A. Massa Jr., hid behind a constitutional stonewall - invoking a state mandate that keeps complaints under a veil of confidentiality until misconduct charges are filed. Specific answers, they said, would jeopardize the anonymity of the complainants and cast a shadow of suspicion on the accused judges.
The state panel, the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice, has requested copies of board documents and repeatedly asked questions about board proceedings in which "no formal charges have been filed and where the subjects of the investigations have expressly preserved the right to confidentiality," Judicial Conduct Board attorney Paul H. Titus said in the filing.
Full Article and Source:
State Judicial Conduct Board Draws Heat
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"Kids-For-Cash" Judges Ask for Delay
7 comments:
this is the year 2010 enough is enough no more hiding no more stonewalling it's time to let the sunshine in on these judges and lawyers who have complaints tear down their walls of protection we the people are totally fed up with the secrecy we must know who is representing us and judging us
The panel needs to be looked at hard here. Their delay allowed hundreds of more kids to suffer while Conahan and Ciaverella were doing their thing. And how many elderly wards suffered the same?
The panel should be held accountable.
Keep up the heat!
The entire judicial board should be scrapped and replaced.
"A shadow of suspicion" on the judges? What about the victims, Klett. What about them?
All judicial complaints should be public.
If there hadn't been that protective veil of secrecy, Conahan and Ciavarella would have been off the bench years ago.
I don't know which makes me sicker - Conahan, Ciaveralla and Toole or the Judicial Conduct Board.
The PA Judicial Conduct Board improperly dismissed my complaint against a judge. I sent this complaint to the Commission, and I urge others to do the same. According to testimony before the Commission, 92% of complaints are dismissed. I wanted the 11 people on the Commission to know that Luzerne County-type corruption is widespread because the JCB ignores wrongdoing.
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