Former Lucerne County, Pennsylvania juvenile court judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan were convicted last year for receiving over a million dollars in bribes from developers of private prisons for sending juveniles to their facilities.

Since the scandal came to light the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has reversed the convictions of 2,251 juveniles sentenced by Ciavarella and Conahan. Part of the Lucerne County system under Ciavarella and Conahan was that the juveniles were routinely denied the right of counsel. As a result not only were the judges allowed to ride roughshod over the juvenile’s rights but there was no one present in the courtroom to challenge the judges or to complain to the authorities. A new law that takes effect this month requires that counsel be appointed in most cases, But the state left it up to the local government to find money to hire the attorneys and many local governments, including Lucerne County, are having trouble finding the money in these economic times.

Another new law prevents judges from shackling juveniles in the courtroom. This demeaning act treated juveniles as criminals and it was a favorite activity of Cavarella.

Last spring we wrote about police scandals in Contra Costa County California and Antioch. The head of the Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET), and the owner of a private detective agency, both former Antioch police officers were accused of stealing drugs from the CNET safe and selling them to the clients of Chistopher Butler’s private detective agency. Butler was further accused of setting up the husbands of his clients who were seeking divorces for DUI arrests by having the men lured into a bar by an attractive women and then by having Tanabe arrest the men for driving under the influence.

Now it turns out in a new Federal indictment that Butler apparently bribed Tanabe with a gun and cocaine in exchange for making the arrests. This is the same police department that allowed Phillip and Nancy Garrido to live in their midst with kidnap victim Jaycee Dugard and her daughters put away in a back yard shack

Another Pennsylvania judge has been charged with bribery. ¹ Judge Ross Cioppa of Bradford Hills has been charged with bribery for attempting to exchange favorable decision in landlord tenant matters to two women in exchange for sex. In addition to bribery the 70 year old judges is also charged with indecent assault and official oppression.

In one matter he is alleged to have asked a female litigant, facing eviction to massage his genitals. When she refused he obtained her approval to take pictures of her in exchange for a favorable decision. In the second case, he is alleged to have made sexual advances towards a tenant in litigation with her landlord. When she refused he asked her out on a date and gave her his phone number. When she did not call him he ruled against her.

Cioppa has been placed on paid leave pending the resolution of the criminal case. ²

Allegheny County District Attorney Stephen A. Zappala Jr. said “This is dealing with the integrity of the justice system, The victims are some of the most vulnerable people in the community.”
Zappala will not have to look far for witnesses. At least two members of his staff made complaints about Cioppa. Former Assistant District Attorney Laurel Brandstetter claims that Cioppa once blocked the door to his office as she was leaving and said that she was not leaving the office until she agreed to go out to dinner with him. He eventually relented and allowed her to leave. While such conduct might not be criminal it certainly violates the judge’s code of ethics. Canon 1 Of the Pennsylvania Code of Judicial Ethics states judges should uphold the integrity and independence of the judiciary. Canon 2 states judges should avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all their activities. These canons either taken individually or in combination certainly prohibit a judge from dating an attorney who appears before the judge.

While Cioppa is not to be prejudged certainly either attempting to get sexual favors from litigants or dating attorneys appearing before him brings the judiciary into disrepute and undermines the American system of justice.

New York attorney, Robert Simels was sentenced to 14 years in prison for attempted obstruction of justice, bribery, and importation of electronic surveillance devices. ¹ He represented Shaheed Khan in a drug case. Khan was a drug lord in Guyana involoved in transporting drugs to the United States. During the pendency of the case Khan with the help of others bribed, threatened, and cajoled government witnesses into not testifying against Khan at trial.

Simels was convicted at trial and he appealed. The government’s case was based upon an informant, Selwyn Vaughn, and recorded calls between Simels and Khan. Khan operated the Phantom Squad in Guyana and Vaughn worked for him. Vaughn learned that Khan planned to escape from jail in the United States and he reported the information to the DEA. On directions from the Phantom Squad and the DEA. Vaugn met five times with Simels in his officel and Vaughn secretly recorded the conversations.

Placing an informant in defense meetings and recording meetings between the defendant and his attorney implicate important Sixth Amendment rights. The Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to counsel but that right is meaningless if counsel is not allowed to vigorously and without interference represent the rights of his/her client. It is one thing when an informant reports a crime to the government and then the government prosecutes an individual. It is another thing when the DEA sends an informant to talk to defense counsel and then the informant pretends to help the defendant find and interview witnesses while recording the conversations of his meetings with counsel and turning the recordings over to the government.

Likewise it is a violation of the Sixth Amendment and the attorney/client privilege when the government tapes jailhouse interviews between an attorney.

The government’s response to the Sixth Amendment issue is that it created two teams of lawyers who did not communicate with each other and were separated by a fire wall to prosecute Khan and to investigate Simels. ² The court rejected the Sixth Amendment claims on several bases. As to the placement of Vaughn into the defense team by the DEA, the court ruled that the placement of Vaughn on the defense team did not violate the Sixth Amendment because there is no right under the Sixth Amendment prior to indictment and the conversations between Vaughn and Simels occurred before Simels was indicted. It also ruled that the government had good cause to place Vaughn on the defense team to gain information about Simels and that Khan as part of his plea agreement agreed to waive any right to work product.

But I guess it could have been foreseen that there were problems with the representation. Simels got a 1.4 million dollar retain. During the case Simels apparently asked for more money to be used to bribe witness or to harass witnesses. Very few criminal cases outside of the OJ case or Enron deserve 1.4 million dollars. This was not a death penalty case and while it may have required travel to Guyana it was a relatively simple drug case and 1.4 million sounds like a lot of money. We do not know what promises Simels made to Khan to come up with such money.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about two former Antioch, California police officers, Norman Wielsch, who was the head of the Central Contra Costa Narcotics Enforcement Team (CNET), and Christopher Butler, who now has a private detective agency. Wielsch was accused of providing drugs seized by CNET to Butler who sold them to his clients. They split the profits.

Also accused of narcotics and weapons violations was another former Antioch police, officer, Stephen Tanabe, who was working for the Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department. As the story went Butler represented women seeking divorces from their husbands. He would arrange for good looking women to get the husband drunk at a local bar. Then Tanabe would arrest the husbands for DUI’s in order to dirty them in the divorce proceedings.

I suspected at the time that Tanabe was being paid by Butler for his services. However I did not have any evidence of such I still don’t have any evidence but apparently the Contra Costa County District Attorney does. They filed charges alleging three counts of obstruction of justice, making false arrests and selling steroids. They say that on at least one occasion Tanabe received money from Butler for making an arrest.

As a result of the investigation fifteen cases have been dismissed and five cases have not been charged, either because the charges were no longer credible or because Wielsch and Tanabe are unavailable to testify.

Tanabe has resigned from the Sheriff’s Department and is fighting the charges. If he is guilty it is hard to think of a more corrupt way to tarnish his former badge than taking money to arrest people who have been set up for private gain. ¹

As part of the Alaskan corruption investigation involving former Senator Ted Stevens, the government prosecuted State Representative Victor Kohring. He was convicted of attempted extortion and bribery.

The Ninth Circuit reversed Kohring’s conviction on Brady grounds, Friday, similar to those used to dismiss the charges against Stevens.

After Steven’s conviction and while Kohring’s case was on appeal the government disclosed significant documents that should have been disclosed prior to Stevens’ trial. At that point Kohring made a Brady motion and received thousands of pages of material most of which should have been disclosed prior to trial.

The documents included “FBI 302 reports,” undated and dated handwritten notes from interviews with Allen and Smith, e-mails, various memoranda, and police reports. They involved evidence that that Bill Allen who’s oil field services company, VECO, was attempting to get legislation through the legislature, was being investigated for having sex with minors. While this might not in and of itself been particularly relevant he attempted to suborn perjury and he attempted to hide a witness in the investigation. This affects his credibility and opens him up to significant cross examination. Other documents show that Allen and his colleague, Rick Smith, gave significantly different numbers as to the amount of money given to Kohring. The difference in the amounts would have given additional credibility to Kohring’s testimony and the jury may have found that the money was given for legitimate reasons if it believed the lower figures given to agents during the investigation.

In Brady v. Maryland the Supreme Court held that the government had to provide favorable, material evidence to the defense. To show a violation of Brady one must show “(1) the evidence at issue must be favorable to the accused, either because it is exculpatory, or because it is impeaching; (2) that evidence must have been suppressed by the State, either willfully or inadvertently; and (3) prejudice must have ensued.” In reversing the conviction the Ninth Circuit found that a Brady violation occurred. There is no question that the government suppressed evidence and that a significant amount of the evidence was favorable to Kohring. Furthermore he was prejudiced in that the jury could have found him not guilty if it had seen some of the suppressed evidence.