PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER: …Scandal has become an enduring theme of the Pennsylvania judiciary. On Tuesday, in the latest embarrassment, state Supreme Court Justice J. Michael Eakin resigned rather than face a trial before the state Court of Judicial Discipline on charges he breached ethics rules by exchanging emails containing racist and misogynistic content among a small group of lawyers and golfing companions.
That followed the early retirement in 2014 of yet another Supreme Court justice, Seamus McCaffery, after it was disclosed that he sent hundreds of pornographic emails, many of them to lawyers in the state Attorney General’s office, and that his wife had received case referral fees from personal injury lawyers.
Two years before that, Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin was suspended from office following her arrest on charges she used state employees and resources in her campaign to win a seat on the court. She was later convicted and resigned.
And in yet another stain on the system, two state court judges in Luzerne County were charged in 2009 with sentencing juveniles to a for-profit prison in which they had hidden financial interests, the so-called Kids for Cash scandal, and both eventually went to jail… (more)
EDITOR: We are gratified that the Inquirer is finally waking up to what Bill Keisling has been writing in books and more recently in his columns in NewsLanc / Real Reporting. Of course the Inquirer’s sister Daily News had very dirty hands in the Kathleen Kane persecution.
