Former Luzerne County Pennsylvania Common Pleas Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. was found guilty of racketeering, racketeering conspiracy, honest services mail fraud, money laundering conspiracy and a host of tax fraud charges in what has become known as the“Kids for Cash Scandal.” As a juvenile court judge, it was alleged that Ciavarella received money from a for profit company in exchange for sending children to the company’s private jail. Many of the children were sent to the facility for lengthy periods of time while being denied various rights guaranteed by the constitution. Often Ciavarella denied the children their right to counsel before sending them to the private jail.

It was a mixed verdict with Ciavarella being cleared of extortion, bribery and honest services wire fraud charges. Overall he was convicted of 12 of the 39 counts, including most of the serious allegations, in the indictment. But it is not exactly clear what the jury believed. For example it convicted him of racketeering and honest services fraud but it found him not guilty of bribery. Honest services fraud is a rather complicated crime. It is defined in 18 U.S.C. §1346 as a “scheme or artifice to defraud includes a scheme or artifice to deprive another of the intangible right of honest services.” The Supreme Court has limited it to cases which involve a “fraudulent schemes to deprive another of honest services through bribes or kickbacks supplied by a third party who ha[s] not been deceived”. In the case of Ciavarella he received money from the private corporation to deprive the Common Pleas Court of his “honest services.”

Racketeering is a form of conspiracy under which money is obtained illegally often by extortion. The jury found that Ciavarella illicitly obtained $997,000 in kickbacks from the builder of the PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care detention centers.

While this trial did not concentrate upon the juveniles’ denial of constitutional rights, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed 4000 juvenile convictions in Ciavarella’s court.

Furthermore there remains a pending civil suits by thousands of juveniles ¹ who appeared before Ciavarella.

Two Pennsylvania juvenile court judges were indicted for accepting kickbacks in exchange for sending children to a private jail.

Often former Luzerne County (Wilkes Barre) Court of Common Plea Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan sentenced juveniles to the private jails without appointing lawyers for them on minor offenses. Among the charges for which children were placed in the private jail were for stealing loose change from cars, writing prank notes, possession of drug paraphernalia and mocking an assistant principal on myspace.com.

The judges received 2.8 million dollars in kickbacks from the private jails.

Last year Ciavarella and Conahan plead guilty to a sweetheart deal that would have given them 87 month sentences but the pleas were rejected as being too soft by United States District Court Judge Edward M. Kosik and the pleas were withdrawn.

Conahan plead guilty last week to one count of a racketeering corruption charge. There is no plea agreement and Judge Kosik could sentence him up to the maximum of twenty years. Ciavarella also withdrew his plea after Judge Kosik refused the 87 month deal and he is facing trial.

A twelve year old boy will be tried in adult court for the murder of his father’s girlfriend, according to to a Pennsylvania judge. He is facing life in prison if convicted.

Jordan Brown, who was eleven at the time is accused of shooting his father’s pregnant girlfriend in the head while she was sleeping. Allegedly he approached Kenzie Marie Houk with his loaded gun and shot her in the head.

After a hearing Lawrence County Judge Dominick Motto refused to send the case to Juvenile Court. He said “This offense was an execution-style killing of a defenseless pregnant young mother. A more horrific crime is difficult to imagine,”

At the hearing there was evidence that Brown wrapped the gun in a blanket. After shooting Houk he went to school getting rid of the empty shells on the way. Furthermore the evidence shows that he continues to deny shooting Houk despite the facts that forensic tests show that she was shot with Brown’s 20 gauge juvenile model shotgun.

Assuming that he did kill Houk, the fact that he does not show any remorse indicates to me that he is not mature enough to be tried in adult court. He obviously did not understand the severity of his actions.

Under Pennsylvania law the burden is on children over ten years old to prove that they can be rehabilitated in the juvenile system. But Judge Motto found that Brown could not be rehabilitated before he turns 21. Talking about rehabilitation prior to trial appears to assume Brown’s guilt. Unless and until Brown is convicted he is assumed to be innocent. Therefore it seems to violate the Constitutional requirement that he is being asked to proved that he can be rehabilitated prior to finding that he is guilty.

Questions must be asked about why the child had a loaded gun. Even if his father was teaching him how to hunt, why was he allowed to have a loaded gun in the house and why did the gun not have a trigger lock on it?

The Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of sentencing people for crimes, other than homicide, committed as minors, to life without parole. In the entire world there are 109 people in prison for crimes, other than homicide, sentenced to life without parole. All 109 are in the United States and 77 of the 109 are in Florida. The two cases currently before the Supreme Court are from Florida. One involved the rape of a 72 year old woman and the other an armed burglary.

The United States and Somalia are the only two members of the United Nations that have not signed an international treaty banning the sentencing of minors to life without parole.

Florida not only has three quarters of the juveniles locked up for life without parole for crimes other than homicide in the world but it also has an extremely high number of juveniles being charged with felonies in adult court. Florida tried 3592 juveniles as adults in the fiscal year 2007-2008, Hillsborough County (Tampa) alone tried 660 juveniles in adult court.

When we last visited the story of Mark Ciavarella Jr. and Michael Conahan, about a month ago, the former Luzerne County Pennsylvania juvenile court judges had allegedly received kickbacks from a private jail in exchange for sending kids to the facility. In the process they denied the kids the right to an attorney and ran roughshod over the kids constitutional rights. Senior U.S. District Judge Edward M. Kosik rejected a sweetheart deal they made with prosecutors to spend a significantly below guideline sentence of 87 months in prison.

Wednesday, the Grand Jury indicted them in a 77 page indictment covering 48 counts of racketeering, extortion, bribery, money laundering, fraud and other crimes. The indictment was made public yesterday.

The indictment also seeks the return of 2.8 million dollars wrongfully obtain by Ciavarella and Conahan.

The arraignment on the indictment will be Tuesday.

The California Supreme Court in In re Nolan W. ruled that Juvenile Courts do not have the power to incarcerate parents in dependency matters for failure to comply with reunification plans.

In In re Nolan W. the San Diego County Juvenile Court found Nolan’s mother to be in contempt for her failure to comply with the drug treatment conditions of its SARMS (Substance Abuse Recovery Management System) Under the SARMS program parents in dependency actions who are suspected of having substance abuse problems are referred to a private organization that contracts with the Juvenile Court for assessment. If the programs finds that the parent needs substance abuse treatment, the parent can either voluntarily agree to enter into a contract with SARMS or the Court will order it as part of the reunification program. Failure to comply (dirty tests, missed sessions, etc) with the conditions of the program can result in a order finding the parent in contempt of court. The court may then order up to five days in jail for each violation. In the case of Nolan W.’s mother the court found 60 violations of the SARMS conditions and after the mother failed to appear in court sentenced her to 300 days in jail, later commuted to 32 days.

The Supreme Court found the use of incarceration to force compliance with a reunification policy is unauthorized under state law. Entry into a reunification program is voluntary and while the penalty is severe (removal of the child from the parent’s custody) the parent does not have to enter into or comply with a reunification program. Furthermore the Legislature has set the penalty as the loss of parental rights and at no place does it authorize incarceration for the failure to comply with reunification orders.

The use of incarceration to force compliance with with reunification programs is similar to criminal contempt even thought dependency matters are civil in nature. Civil contempt requires that the order be indeterminative in length and the incarceration be terminated upon compliance with the court order. Unlike civil contempt criminal contempt is punitive and the sentence is for a specific period of time. Since reunification is voluntary and since it is the child, not the parent, that is the ward of the court, the Court found that punitive actions are inappropriate.

As a common sense point of view, if the threat of permanent removal of the child from the household does not result in compliance jail is unlikely to succeed either. Certainly while one is in jail one is probably unable to take significant steps towards reunification and the state policy behind dependency courts requires that reunification be the goal in most cases. As a general rule reunification is in the best interest of the child and the parent’s incarceration is counter productive. In the case of Nolan W. it was particularly unhelpful since it was ordered after reunification efforts had been terminated and when it was apparent that parental rights would probably be terminated.