Ex-judge loses bid for lighter sentence
Got 28 years in ‘kids for cash’ scandal
A federal judge on Tuesday upheld the 28-year sentence imposed in 2011 on the former president judge in Luzerne County, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., for orchestrating a kickback scheme involving for-profit juvenile detention centers.
Ciavarella was at the heart of what became known as the “kids for cash” scandal in which he accepted millions of dollars in bribes from the coowner and builder of two youth centers to remand hundreds of juveniles to those facilities.
U.S. District Judge Christopher C. Conner, presiding in Harrisburg, said in his ruling Tuesday that Ciavarella will not receive a new sentencing hearing.
Ciavarella, 70, had requested a sentence reduction after three of 12 counts on which he was convicted in 2011 were overturned on appeal.
“To be abundantly clear, if we were authorized to reduce Ciavarella’s sentence, we would decline to do so” because of Ciavarella’s abuse of public trust and the harm to juveniles he caused, Judge Conner said.
Ciavarella, who presided over juvenile court, joined with another Luzerne County judge, Michael T. Conahan, to engineer what experts called the worst juvenile-justice scandal in the nation’s history.
Ciavarella and Conahan were convicted of closing a county-run juvenile center and
accepting $2.8 million in kickbacks from the builder and co-owner of the two forprofit facilities — PA Child Care and its sister facility, Western PA Child Care in Butler County.
Conahan, 68, was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison but was recently released to home confinement because of COVID-19 fears.
From 2003 to 2008, Ciavarella sent about 4,000 juveniles to the facilities for a wide range of relatively minor infractions under a zerotolerance policy.
In the wake of the scandal, the state Supreme Court overturned hundreds of the juvenile adjudications of delinquency in Luzerne County, saying that Ciavarella routinely trampled on youths’ constitutional rights in his eagerness to send them to the for-profit jails.
The case stemmed from a two-year federal investigation of alleged corruption in the Luzerne County court system.
Ciavarella and Conahan were first charged in 2009 with receiving millions in payments in an agreement between the court and the private facilities, which were co-owned by attorney Robert Powell. Powell’s partner in the facilities was Greg Zappala, brother of Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. Greg Zappala said he had no knowledge of the payments and was not accused of wrongdoing.
Ciavarella was convicted after an 11-day trial in 2011 and sentenced to 28 years by the late U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik. Ciavarella appealed and lost, after which he claimed that his trial attorneys were ineffective because they should have argued that some of the crimes were barred by the statute of limitations.
The case was reassigned to Judge Conner, who vacated some counts on ineffective counsel grounds, including racketeering conspiracy and money-laundering conspiracy.
Ciavarella also claimed that he was entitled to a new sentencing hearing on the remaining convictions, but Judge Conner rejected that request and said the 28-year sentence would stand.
“This decision reinforces this office’s long-standing commitment to bring justice to those victimized by these corrupt state judges,” said U.S. Attorney David J. Freed in a statement. “They betrayed their community and deserve the substantial punishments they received.”
Powell was sentenced to 18 months in prison for his role in the scandal.
A $4.75 million settlement was approved in 2015, covering at least 2,400 of the juveniles who had appeared before Ciavarella. The plaintiffs had previously reached a $2.5 million settlement with PA Child Care, Western PA Child Care and another company.
The builder of the facilities, Robert K. Mericle, who paid the judges more than $2 million as part of the scheme, agreed in 2011 to pay more than $17 million to the juveniles and their families.