By Christen Smith
Staff Reporter
Capitolwire
HARRISBURG (Oct.27) — State Supreme Court Justice Seamus McCaffery announced his retirement Monday, one week after his colleagues voted to suspend him pending a review from the Judicial Conduct Board regarding his role in the ongoing email porn scandal.
Chief Justice Ronald Castille implicated McCaffery in the scandal in an October 15 statement, disclosing the judge sent or received 234 sexually explicit emails to staff in the attorney general’s office over a four year period starting in 2008.
In a letter to Gov. Tom Corbett, McCaffery said of his twenty years on the bench, “it has all been a great honor and privilege, which I deeply cherish.” McCaffery also ruled out any future role in the Pennsylvania judicial system, citing his intention to “embark on other professional endeavors and paths.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported the announcement follows a weekend of “secret and intense negotiations” in which McCaffery, a former Philadelphia police officer and municipal court judge, was able to secure his government pensions.
“We all have the right to retire,” Corbett said as he addressed a crowd of reporters and lobbyists at the Pennsylvania Press Club Luncheon Monday. “He exercised his.”
McCaffery is the fifth state employee to leave his post in the wake of Attorney General Kathleen Kane’s probe into how state prosecutors handled the Jerry Sandusky child molestation case. During the review — a promise from Kane’s 2012 campaign — investigators uncovered thousands of pornographic emails exchanged between former and current staff members of the attorney general’s office.
Castille pushed Kane earlier this month for all documents implicating the involvement of any justice, judge or district judge in the scandal. After reviewing the files, Castille exonerated six Supreme Court justices — all except McCaffery, whom the Associated Press reports sent most of the emails “to an agent in the attorney general’s office, who then forwarded them to others.”
McCaffery apologized for his “lapse in judgment,” but blamed Castille for “cooking up a controversy” just to spite him. The two justices have had a historically rocky relationship — Castille even admitted to trying to remove McCaffery from the court and has publicly described him as a “sociopath.”
Castille’s office did not return requests for comment Monday.
A third justice, Michael Eakin, came forward last week with a letter addressed to the Judicial Conduct Board in which he described “threatening” behavior from McCaffery regarding Castille’s public statements about him.
“Justice McCaffery told me that I had to cause the Chief Justice to retract his media statements of the prior day,” Eakin wrote. “I told him I would not attempt to do so even if it were possible. He repeated that I had to, and that he needed an answer by noon to prevent release of the emails involving my account.”
Eakin said McCaffery told him “he was not going down alone.”
“I told him I would not attempt to sway the Chief Justice or anyone else because of a threat or to avoid the consequences, however unpleasant that may turn out to be,” Eakin wrote. “I specifically told him that I was not a fixer, and that his demand was totally inappropriate.”
Eakin says McCaffery followed through with his threat and leaked copies of salacious emails to the media. The messages were sent to a private yahoo account registered to a John Smith that Eakin says he opened “years ago to preclude identification of the court or my position on all personal matters, from sales confirmations to my electric bill.”
“To be clear, I still have not seen them,” he wrote. “I have no reason to question the media’s description of them, and that these were received, not sent.”
McCaffery’s recent conduct — plus allegations about his actions related to a traffic citation received by his wife and his attempt to “exert influence over judicial assignments in Philadelphia” — prompted his fellow justices to issue an order to suspend him with pay until the Judicial Conduct Board releases its findings. The order gave the board 30 days to determine whether probable cause exists to file a misconduct charge against McCaffery.
The Associated Press reports Castille was among the four justices voting to suspend McCaffery with pay, along with Max Baer, Corry Stevens and Thomas Saylor while Justice Debra Todd dissented, saying she would have referred the matter, including the question of suspension, to the Judicial Conduct Board.
Todd reiterated her dissenting opinion Monday after the court vacated its order to suspend McCaffery.
“Accordingly, as in my view that order should not have been entered, I have no objection to the court vacating that order today,” she wrote.
The Judicial Conduct Board released a statement Monday following McCaffery’s retirement announcement, saying the ethics investigation would be dropped.
“Since Justice McCaffery has retired and has agreed not to seek senior judge status and not to again seek elective judicial office, the Board has concluded that it is in the best interest of the judiciary and the judicial system of the Commonwealth to dismiss its investigations into the matters specifically referred to in the Supreme Court’s now-vacated order of October 20, 2014,” the board wrote. “Accordingly, the Board will dismiss its investigations into these matters.”
With McCaffery’s retirement, it will be up to Corbett to appoint his replacement, though no timeline for the selection has been offered by the administration yet.
Pennsylvania Bar Association President Francis X. O’Connor said Monday, “because it is important to lawyers and litigants that the Supreme Court functions as efficiently as possible, it is our hope that the Governor and the Pennsylvania Senate will act expeditiously on the appointment of a duly qualified interim justice.”
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