Chief counsel leaves email probe over ties to justice

HARRISBURG >> The chief counsel for the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board stepped aside Wednesday from an investigation into a Supreme Court justice’s raunchy emails after a newspaper reported he played a lead role in the justice’s 2011 re-election campaign.

Board lawyer Bob Graci made the decision after the Philadelphia Daily News reported on his activities on behalf of Justice Michael Eakin four years ago. Two other justices told The Associated Press they were not told about the relationship and should have been.

Judicial Conduct Board member Kevin Brobson said that it was Graci’s decision and that Graci took the action “out of an abundance of caution” and “to avoid the appearance of impropriety.”

Graci, a former state prosecutor and Superior Court judge, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

The Judicial Conduct Board investigates allegations of misconduct against judges in Pennsylvania. It can either dismiss the Eakin matter or decide to file charges with the Court of Judicial Discipline.

Graci also played a lead role in a similar investigation into emails last year that cleared Eakin, and Brobson would not say if the board knew of the Eakin-Graci friendship. Brobson said Francis J. Puskas II, the board’s deputy chief counsel, will now supervise the Eakin investigation.

Attorney General Kathleen Kane, who has made public dozens of emails to and from Eakin that were recovered from her office’s computer system, said Graci made the right decision.

“She says it’s too bad it took exposure of his obvious conflict of interest to make Mr. Graci do the right thing,” said Kane spokesman Chuck Ardo. “He should have done it last year.”

Eakin’s wife Heidi Eakin, a lawyer who is representing him before the Judicial Conduct Board, said she did not know if anyone ever asked if her husband had a relationship with Graci that should be disclosed.

“I am not going to criticize anything Judge Graci has done,” she said. “This conflict-of-interest scenario, it sounds a bit desperate to me.”

The disclosure of emails among prosecutors, judges and others of lewd and lascivious material, including some that demeans women and gays, led a year ago to the abrupt retirement of another Supreme Court justice, Seamus McCaffery. In December, Graci wrote to Eakin to tell him the board had dismissed complaints against him.

The Judicial Conduct Board and the Supreme Court launched fresh investigations after Kane disclosed new details about Eakin’s emails. After the high court received a report last week from a lawyer it hired to look into the matter, the justices announced they were deferring to the board.

On Wednesday, two of those justices said they were disturbed by the reports of Graci’s political efforts on behalf of Eakin.