Prosecutor faces hearing over texting, Facebook account

HARRISBURG » The lead prosecutor handling the case against Penn State fraternity members charged after a pledge died faces a hearing of her own in front of the state board that deals with complaints about lawyers.

The Disciplinary Board of the Supreme Court this week scheduled the Nov. 29 hearing to consider whether Centre County District Attorney Stacy Parks Miller committed professional misconduct in texts with judges that discussed pending cases and by using a fake Facebook account to obtain information on defendants.

The Office of Disciplinary Counsel’s petition for discipline filed in February said Parks Miller contacted judges about cases without informing defense lawyers. It said she misled the disciplinary counsel’s investigators.

Parks Miller said Friday she is willing to answer for her conduct and looks forward to presenting the facts at the hearing.

“The true operations in Centre County are very disturbing and always have been as long as I have been privy to behind the scenes,” Parks Miller said. “I am more than willing to ... be truthful and have my behavior be measured.”

The petition claims a February 2013 email about bail included the defendant’s lawyer and several other people but after Judge Bradley Lunsford responded directly to Parks Miller alone she then replied only to him that he should rescind his bail order.

“He is already gone,” Lunsford replied.

Parks Miller has argued she did not realize the judge had stripped other respondents off the email.

Disciplinary Counsel Anthony Czuchnicki wrote that in May 2014 Parks Miller wrote directly to Lunsford about a different case, asking him: “Are you serious? Scheduling a hearing with me and a pro se inmate ... making me answer to him about the complaints he filed about guards?”

Lunsford, who has since left the bench, later canceled the hearing. A phone listing for Lunsford could not be located.

Czuchnicki said that email exchange was an example of conduct that undermines the integrity of the criminal justice system.

Parks Miller admitted on Friday the email about the inmate was “improper.” She said the dispute with Czuchnicki’s office is over what the appropriate sanction should be.

The Office of Disciplinary Counsel said it recovered 15 partial texts from Parks Miller’s cellphone to another Centre County common pleas court jurist, Judge Jonathan Grine, also in May 2014, sent the day after a trial. They included references to the judge laughing and speculating about the “poor kid’s” family and a suggestion regarding restitution.

Grine gave the defendant three years and ordered restitution. Grine did not return a phone message Friday.

In October 2014, Czuchnicki wrote, Parks Miller did not correct Lunsford when he denied during a recusal hearing that there had been text exchanges between them, despite the fact he sent her 89 texts from May to October that year.