 |
| Allegheny County Common Pleas |
An advocacy group that has spent the last two years observing criminal proceedings in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court and has been highly critical of the overuse of probation in the county, last month filed more than five dozen misconduct complaints against Judge Anthony M. Mariani with the state Judicial Conduct Board.
The list of complaints was attached to a 48-page report issued by the Abolitionist Law Center on Tuesday that addressed the case of Gerald Thomas, who was being held at Allegheny County Jail for a probation violation when he died of natural causes in March.
“The tragic death of Gerald Thomas at Allegheny County Jail was not random—it was the predictable result of overlapping, systematic patterns of state violence that have become commonplace in this county,” wrote staff attorney Dolly Prabhu. “City police, county probation, county courts and the county jail all contributed to the manner of Mr. Thomas’ death.
“At each phase, racism likely played a role in Mr. Thomas’ arrest and continued detention. And, at each phase, common sense reforms could have prevented his needless incarceration and perhaps even his death.”
The report focuses heavily on Mariani, who was the judge presiding over Thomas’ case.
Mariani did not return messages seeking comment on Tuesday afternoon.
Among the allegations against him: that he uses racist language with defendants before him — commenting on defendants’ physical size and strength and talking about the need to “lasso” them; that he deprives defendants of due process in their probation violation hearings; and that he insults defendants who try to defend themselves.
“While Judge Mariani is not the only common pleas court judge engaging in harmful practices, he stands out as a judge whose regular disparaging and belittling of defendants, witnesses and attorneys alike has routinely appalled observers in his courtroom,” the report said. “Judge Mariani’s behavior demands a rigorous inquiry into his fitness to serve as a judge. He is routinely rude, discourteous and unprofessional.”
The complaint process with the Judicial Conduct Board is kept confidential unless and until it decides to file formal charges with the state Supreme Court of Judicial Discipline.
David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said that filing the Judicial Conduct Board complaints seems to be appropriate, based on the observations made in the Abolitionist Law Center report.
Being a judge is “a position of great privilege and responsibility,” he said. “You don’t always deal with easy people and easy circumstances.”
Harris said that judges must be able to maintain the kind of demeanor and temperament that reflects the position.
“If he cannot control his temper, or consistently makes observations of people in personal ways that have nothing to do with the case,” Harris said, perhaps Mariani should step down.
“My speculation is (the Judicial Conduct Board) would see it as a pattern and take it seriously,” he said. “I think the pattern is evidenced from just what I saw in the report.”
The report highlights what happened to Thomas, 26, who died at Allegheny County Jail from natural causes on March 6.
Thomas was on probation for a case in Mariani’s courtroom when he was pulled over by Pittsburgh police for rolling through a stop sign. The officer who stopped Thomas searched the car and found a handgun in the glove compartment, and Thomas was charged with illegal possession of a firearm. Even though a magistrate judge set bail at $2,000, Thomas was detained on a probation violation.
Thomas’ defense attorney, Ken Haber, filed a motion to suppress the evidence because the search was illegal, and Mariani agreed.
He threw out the evidence, and the district attorney’s office withdrew the charges on Jan. 27.
However, Mariani would not lift Thomas’ detainer. Thomas was on probation for drug-related convictions, according to court records.
At a probation violation hearing on Feb. 17, the judge said Thomas was driving without a license, and that the officers who stopped him said they saw him put the gun in the glove box before they searched the car.
Mariani gave the prosecution and defense time to brief the issue, but Thomas died from a pulmonary embolism before that could happen.
The report also highlights dozens of other observations made by the Abolitionist Law Center’s Court Watch program since 2020.
Fifteen times, the report said, Mariani “made inappropriate comments about a Black man’s physical appearance.”
In one instance, it continued, Mariani said to a defendant, “‘You look pretty meaty, how many pushups can you do without stopping?’”
In another, he said, “‘When I look at you, I see a well built guy. No one’s going to touch you if you don’t want them to … I wouldn’t fight you if I had a club in my hand. You’re built strong, stocky.’”
It only happened twice with white defendants, the report said.
“Based on my personal observations, the Black defendants Judge Mariani directs these inappropriate comments to are often of average-looking physique,” Prabhu said. “Judge Mariani engages in racist stereotyping with a shameful pedigree dating back centuries in this country every time he describes what he sees when he looks at a Black man: a big, strong, violent danger to society.”
The report also addresses the overuse of probation and what the Abolitionist Law Center sees as the flaw of incarcerating people for technical violations.
“Probation has never been the rehabilitative program it claims to be. Probation sets people up to fail, and traps people into a harmful and destabilizing cycle of reincarceration and supervision,” the report said. “Today, community supervision is the primary driver of mass incarceration, both in jails and prisons.”
The report argues that probation detainers are redundant, since new criminal charges initiate the process of revoking probation anyway.
“Technical violations, which by definition are non-criminal, rarely justify prolonged pretrial detention. Thus, probation detainers serve virtually no justifiable public safety purpose. Instead, the courts’ overuse of this tool keeps the Allegheny County Jail full, and ensures that a large proportion of those on probation will be trapped in destabilizing and traumatic cycles of incarceration and supervision.”
As of Tuesday, there were 1,663 people incarcerated at Allegheny County Jail, according to the county’s jail dashboard.
Of those, 522 were being held on some kind of county, state or external probation detainer. 413 were awaiting trial, and 68 were serving their sentence.
Harris said it is clear that probation — and particularly long periods of probation — are being overused.
“To me, this is one of the real problems for our county and Pennsylvania, generally,” Harris said. “It will cause our incarcerated system to resist further efforts to shrink its size and have fewer people under state control.”
Particularly difficult, Harris and the report noted, are the very strict conditions attached to probation — such as zero tolerance of alcohol or drug use, or requirements to have a job — that can lead to a person’s failure.
“Some people manage to succeed at it, but it makes it very hard,” Harris said.
d.
Harris acknowledged that, like in Thomas’ case, a person on probation who illegally has a firearm would be concerning to any judge.
“If you use probation, you have to play by its rules,” he said. “If probation is part of the legal sentencing apparatus, and one of the conditions is no firearm, you certainly have to consider that as a judge.”
The report suggests a number of potential reforms — prohibiting split
sentences which include incarceration and long tails of probation;
removing police from traffic enforcement and instead use technology to
issue warnings and fines for speeding or other infractions; and
prohibiting the use of probation detainers for technical violations such
as unpaid fines and fees.
No comments:
Post a Comment