No 5 more years for judges

By Dick Miller

 

Pennsylvania is proud and steadfast: Our politicians when bought and paid for; there are no refunds, deals made are deals completed.

 

WE.CONNECT.DOTS:   One question on the ballot at the April 26 Pennsylvania primary concerns mandatory retirement of judges.  The current age is 70 and the question asks if we want to raise that to 75.

Please vote against it.

Judges, collectively, do not deserve an extra five years to pad their pensions.

Many Pennsylvania judges are not deserving because they do a poor job of policing their own ranks.  Scandals have been frequent in recent years and very few of the exposures can be attributed to the honest judges.  Unfortunately, the good judges are also the silent judges.

The 1,000 judges assigned to Pennsylvania courts each get paid about $190,000 per year.  They have excellent health benefits for as long as they live.  If the judge reaches mandatory retirement age with something over two ten-year terms, the pension will equal take home pay when working.

The best political job to have in Pennsylvania is to be a judge.  To be slotted in to the first ten-year term requires running in a contested political election.  After that you are subjected to a retention vote every ten years.  Count on one hand the number of judges defeated at a retention election since the system began in 1969.

Judges get a pay hike every year, usually pegged to the cost of living adjustment.  A recession has no negative impact on a judge’s salary.  Each courtroom is a kingdom.

In 2005 when state lawmakers made their midnight pay grab for all three branches of government, voters rebelled.  A bill repealing the raises was quickly adopted, but judges were exempted.  The judges threatened court action should the legislature attempt to repeal their increases.

The deal rumored to be in place was that the judiciary would quickly dispense of constitutional or procedural objections to casino gambling in exchange for pay hikes.  Pennsylvania is proud and steadfast: Our politicians when bought and paid for; there are no refunds, deals made are deals completed.

Pennsylvania has a unified judicial system.  The 970 elected common pleas judges in the county courts have immense power, particularly in the more rural courthouses.  But they are all beholden to the PA Supreme Court, one of the oldest judicial bodies in America.

Seldom is that supervisory relationship in a unified court tested, however.

Our PA Supreme Court provides little or no oversight nor do they set an example.

In 2008, prosecution of the president judge and a senior judge in Luzerne County began.  These two corrupt jurists saw to it that the county’s juvenile detention home was underfunded so that they could send wayward juveniles to private detention centers in exchange for kickbacks from the owners.

None of these children, said to number around 4,000 over a period of years, were represented by legal counsel.  Recommendations from juvenile counselors were ignored.  At least one juvenile committed suicide when he was sentenced to a detention center several hundred miles from Luzerne County.

The playout of perhaps the largest judicial court scandal in American history literally occurred for a decade or more under the noses of PA Supreme Court.  As it was, the IRS and FBI cracked the case with help from a whistleblower hoping to get a lighter sentence on an unrelated crime.  Many people within the Luzerne judicial system knew juveniles were being deprived of due process, but no one spoke up.

With the mandatory retirement age still at 70, there are judges now on the Common Pleas bench who cannot function.  One is President Judge of a county court, often asked to recuse himself because of a declining ability to speak.

In another county the jurist has early stages of dementia, but still has not reached age 70.  The president judge and court administrator are careful to schedule only simple hearings in that courtroom where a law clerk keeps the process on track.

An appellate court judge hired his wife to be his administrator.  She kept her law license current, took-in cases, then referred them out to other law firms for a fee.

Two Supreme Court jurists have resigned in disgrace after being embroiled in the internet porn scandal blown open by Attorney General Kathleen Kane.  One, Michael Eakin, agreed to pay a $50,000 fine for his misconduct in exchange for no criminal charges.  Because he will not have a criminal record he can begin to collect his $153,000 annual retirement pay.

General Kane has now reported that two more Supreme Court justices, Max Baer and Kevin Dougherty (just elected last year) are among those who received “problematic” porn emails.

Bottom Line:  General Kane exposes what has been a network of judges, prosecutors, investigators, defense attorneys and other related personnel who exchanged internet pornography for years throughout Harrisburg and middle PA courts and law offices.  Now, it appears that remaining judges and friends of those she has exposed are working to remove her from office.

Many elected lawmakers are also lawyers.  The entire system is a suck-up.  These misdeeds were known to other judges and lawyers who remained silent.

Noted researcher and reporter Bill Keisling says these incidents “speak volumes.”  Our court system, he maintains, is “perhaps the most corrupt and out-of-control institution in the state.”

For as long as jurists make no effort to police their own ranks, they do not deserve another five years feeding at the public trough.

Will General Kane have time to clean out the corruption in our judicial system before allies of the corruptors are able to force her from office?

Not likely.  After all, this is Pennsylvania.