Ex-judge gets 17.5 years in "kids for cash" case

SCRANTON, Pa. — A former chief county judge who took part in a massive kickback scheme involving for-profit juvenile detention centers was sentenced Friday to 17 1/2 years in prison.

Appearing in a federal courtroom in Scranton, former Luzerne County President Judge Michael Conahan, 59, apologized to the incarcerated youths, the legal community and the public.

"The system is not corrupt," he said. "I was corrupt."

To the children sent to a pair of facilities from which he received kickbacks, Conahan offered a direct apology.

Conahan pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy last year. He and former Judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. were charged with taking bribes from the builder of a pair of juvenile detention centers and extorting cash from the facilities' co-owner.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned about 4,000 juvenile convictions in the wake of the so-called "kids for cash" scandal.

Ciavarella was convicted of some of the charges at trial. He was sentenced last month to 28 years in prison.

Assistant U.S. Attorney William Houser acknowledged that, unlike Ciavarella, Conahan had cooperated with prosecutors. But he requested a substantial sentence anyway.

U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik recommended Conahan be placed in a federal prison camp in Florida so he can be close to his family.

Conahan's attorney called the sentence disappointing but said there would be no appeal.

[Dgunner]

Both of the judges should have been placed in the town square and shot.I hope the lawsuits break the entire state coffer.If the tax payers don't like it move the hell out alabama.I hope they get so broke the state police can't be paid and the fire dept. has to become toaly volunteer if they can find any.

[legalbutnotjust]

There is no reason here to be quite as evil-minded as Mark Ciavarella and Mike Conahan, two elitist thugs whose conduct in tandem carried an almost alumni-like fraternal bond no two graduates from the school of wicked human trafficking horrors could ever match up to; their abuses & greed, collectively, is virtually unparalleled to other past judicial corruption cases.

It is the stuff of a nightmarish saga with epochal magnitude, built upon years of sophisticated and carefully evolved planning, backscratching and bean counting. All, of course, at the terrible expense of defenseless children and their families. The sociopathic nature of these crimes, the astoundingly wayward and bold-faced complicity between these two guys and a range of state and local officials, in addition to executives and administrators from the private prison sector. Years of lofty payouts, thousands of victims and the incredibly disproportional rates of attorney waivers, convictions and committment orders - from just Luzerne County - in comparison to all other counties in Pennsylvania's juvenile system. The askew numbers coupled with the inexplicable escalation of their private enrichment for years begged the question of how this could have been going on, or just what was really going on to begin with. Conduct of this felonious duo reached its peak but began even before construction of the detention centers, the harbinger for all this illegal commerce, was complete. But the centers were built, the centers were there, and thus stood the bastion for how these two would galvanize the plan they, and many others, so artfully masterminded.

Once the graders retired, backfill was in place, and block and mortar complete, Conahan and Ciavarella began supplying the chattels as quickly as the rest of the work of the facilities was completed. And once furnished replete with all the trappings and moldings of a juvenile jail, with its institutional banality and cool sterility, all that was left to do [with the kids] was commit them cheap and stack them deep. The kids would be there now, in their new place of abode. Thousands, all sent for a pittance per child if you do the math: About $350.000 each.

While it is easy to see why so many would feel that death is an appropriate punishment for these two, the most difficult aspect to overcome in justifying the ultimate punishment for either of them is the fact that this entire set of activity is nothing new in U.S. Society. The very same circumstances befall adults all over the U.S. all the time, people who are poor, guilty or not, and who are as much deprived of their constitutional rights as these kids were. Private detention centers are a booming business, and are nothing new either. So events in Luzerne County were old hat, empirically, and nor do these terribly unjust circumstances involve a mere conspiracy between only a few individuals. Nationwide, there are many thousands of attorneys, judges, probation officials and other state-level entities whose personell are all to one extent or another responsible for peonage in our land and the illegal conviction and confinement of alleged offenders. It is for this reason that death is not an appropriate poenalty for Mike Conahan and Mark Ciavarella. Too many others are too much to blame as well, regradless of who spearheads these campaigns of judicial and correctional terror. Punishment is financialized and judicial conduct is politicized. Due Process is hopelessly lost in the background, amid the foray of class-oriented conflict, and status gapping.

"I'm a judge, I wear a suit every day, I'm an important person with a huge reputation," either of them would've said. "Who are you- you're nobody, just a punk kid without resources required to protect you here. Your presence alongside a competent, good faith attorney is not a charity, you're not entitled to have the merits of your case and background heard here." That was the attitude of Conahan and Ciavarella. However, they are not alone in having such capriciously vindictive arrogance- and ignorance. Their evil spirit is upstaged perhaps only by the magnitude of their lust for private gain. Four-thousand kids, five thousand by other estimates.

Death is not the apporpriate or warranted punishment. Neither is mollycoddling in a country-club you aren't permittred to exit either. No, just a simple twenty-three hour lockdown in maximum security. The surest measure these creeps will stay safe behind bars, because their personal protection as inmates is not a 'charity' either.

[rwsmith29456]

Good Lord, what a sorry sack of $@I^.

[mom23terrier]

if you can find other non-truncated articles by AP it goes a bit further... remember that Luzerne and Lackawanna Counties are heavily Democratic (as is Chicago and look at the thug politics there.. I lived there and in PA so it's unfortunately true)

""There's a stark contract between Mark Ciavarella and Mike Conahan. Mark Ciavarella fought this tooth and nail. Mark Ciavarella antagonized all of you, antagonized every child, every juvenile," Gelso told reporters. "But Mike Conahan didn't do that. Mike Conahan realized that people need to heal."

In sentencing Conahan, Kosik spoke of the deep-rooted political culture that produced him, one in which corruption is tacitly accepted. The federal government's four-year investigation of public corruption in Luzerne and Lackawanna counties has snared more than 30 people, including state lawmakers, county officials, school board members and others.

In a letter to Kosik, Conahan's sister recalled their father, dealing with a long-ago ethics investigation, couldn't understand why it was wrong to award a contract to a friend. Kosik said Conahan probably felt the same way about the juvenile-center kickbacks: "That everyone would benefit and no one would get hurt."

Investigators disclosed earlier this year that they were led to the judges by reputed mob boss William D'Elia, who became a government informant after his 2006 arrest on charges of witness tampering and conspiracy to launder drug money. He and Conahan regularly met for breakfast."

[noloyalisti]

So they kill Troy Davis who may have been innocent and this slimewad gets to go to jail. Shame on the US.

[undead_warlock]

You have to wonder why the kids in these cases ended up in a courtroom in the first place. Granted, their punishments were probably a bit harsh, but it's hard to get sentenced to juvie if you stay out of a trouble with the legal system to begin with. So I do feel sorry for these juveniles to an extent but probably not as much as a great many people. Moral of the story: Don't get arrested and you don't get screwed over...

[amerilatino]

No, the moral of the story is: Don't screw people over and you won't get nailed. If you don't know that now you will some day.

[KPeters_from_UK]

You need to do some research before passing judgment on the kids. For instance, one child who was barely 12 was sentence for years for stealing candy. Another boy took his mom's car for a joy ride so she wanted to teach him a lesson. She called the police. The mom had no idea that the judge would take it so far...five years in jail. Many kids were jailed for extremely minor offences that slap on the wrist or calling their parents would have scared most of these kids straight.

[amerilatino]

Some family enforcer should take out these judges and and their partners in crime.

[John782011]

Lucky he was not sentenced to the same number of months he put the kids through, he would never have a chance to get out.

[Davecat94]

Reminds me of the movie Holes.

[Wondering53]

Good! God only knows what kind of damage they did to some of the kids who did not deserve such sentences.

[mom23terrier]

If you want a condensed story of the mess, it was in PEOPLE Magazine, April 15, 2009. I used it in a Juvenile Justice course I took and I've followed the case since then. Apparently Conlon got 17.5 years and Ciaverella got 28 years. I wish I'd been in the courtrooms to get the reasoning of the differences in the sentences, but I do note that Ciaverella was far more defiant while Conlon appears more remorseful.

They will be serving time in FLORIDA in a federal prison (think 'Club Fed') so they can be close to their families. Lessee... hmmmm they were judges in Pennsylvania, family lives in Florida.... and a lot of the money the got was to buy property in Florida. Doesn't something stink here? It does in my opinion.

[DenverBroncofan]

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned about 4,000 juvenile convictions in the wake of the so-called "kids for cash" scandal.

===============================================================

Sounds like there will be 4000 laaw suits coming as they should

[mom23terrier]

just remember who REALLY pays for those lawsuits.... YOU do. I just wonder what the heck happened to the millions they got for kickbacks. I know they bought homes in Florida... and real estate... probably had to sell at the 'economy in the dumps' price to pay ...... ta da... their LAWYERS. But the taxpayers of Pennsylvania are going to be paying those settlements.