Pennsylvania courts in crisis Part 1

Who needs criminals when you have judges like this?

by Bill Keisling

With the conviction of Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin this February, Pennsylvania now faces the specter of the second legislative impeachment of a high court judge in 20 years.

The last impeachment of a Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice happened in 1994, with the removal from the bench of Justice Rolf Larsen.

It’s beyond debate that Pennsylvania today is plagued by courts and a judiciary that is awash in behavior that is unethical, and often outright criminal.

Making matters worse, no one seems able to do anything about the slide of Pennsylvania judiciary into blatant criminality.

The recent record speaks for itself.

The son of former Chief Justice Stephen Zappala was part owner of a detention facility that for years bribed Luzerne County judges in the infamous Cash for Kids scandal, in which some 6,500 kids were sold down the river in return for judicial enrichment. While Chief Justice Zappala’s son maintains he did nothing wrong, and was not prosecuted, it was years before court watchdogs could attain an investigation of the bribed Luzerne County judges.

The current chief justice, Ronald Castille, in 2011 was caught funneling millions of dollars allocated for a Philadelphia family court to a golfing buddy.

The wife of Supreme Court Justice Seamus P. McCaffery over the years collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in “referral fees” from law firms with cases before McCaffery.

In 2010, Perry County judge, Joseph Rehkamp, was accused of assaulting his wife, who said he was drunk at the time and tried to choke her.

A York County judge, Thomas Kelley, was investigated (but not prosecuted) on charges that he broke his girlfriend’s arm in a domestic dispute. Also in York County, the former police commissioner complains he was unable to attain an investigation of a courthouse sex ring .

In Philadelphia, meanwhile, this January, nine current or former traffic court judges were charged by the FBI with fixing traffic tickets.

This news comes only 25 years after the infamous Philadelphia Roofer’s Union court scandal, when nine judges were caught taking envelopes of cash from union officials.

It goes on and on, from unfettered criminal activities in the state supreme court, to misbehavior by local magistrates.

With judges like this in Pennsylvania, who needs criminals?

Physicists tells us our universe is inexplicably drifting apart at an accelerated rate, presumably due to some unseen dark energy or force that is literally tearing apart the fabric of space and time.

In a similar fashion, corruption in Pennsylvania’s courts has also undeniably accelerated in recent years, and is equally pulling us apart at the seams, debasing and endangering our society.

Instead of the amiable, trustworthy and beloved Judge Thatcher written about by Mark Twain in his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Pennsylvanians increasingly find themselves going before Judge Dredd.

The historical record speaks for itself, or ‘loquitur pro se ipsa’, to use the Latin phrase of lawyers.

The last legislative impeachment of a judge by the Pennsylvania legislature before Justice Rolf Larsen’s impeachment in 1994 occurred 183 years earlier, when Northumberland, Luzerne and Lycoming County Judge Thomas Cooper was removed from the bench in 1811.

Judge Cooper in 1811 was hit with 10 counts of “official misconduct,” including instances of bad temperament and charges that he sat on cases where he had a “pecuniary interest.” (Are you at all worried, Justice McCaffery?)

Judge Cooper jailed one man for wearing a hat in his courtroom, and locked up another for whispering during proceedings. That’s a far cry from awarding your golfing buddy a $12 million contract, or sitting by while 6,500 kids are sold down the river to a private detention facility.

Pennsylvania’s founder, William Penn, found himself with a similar judicial temperament issue in 1685.

The year before, in 1684, Penn appointed wealthy landowner Nicholas More as the state’s chief justice.

“Like many of Penn’s political appointments, More was a man of wealth. He had purchased 10,000 acres of land from Penn. Penn believed that men with a stake in the colony’s future would serve Pennsylvania best, and he had faith in the abilities of men of business. Unfortunately, More, a physician with no legal training, was arrogant and contentious and thus temperamentally unsuited to the job,” writes Teddi DiCanio.

“Using a brief clause in Pennsylvania’s Charter of Liberties, the Assembly impeached More. On May 15, 1685, an Assembly member introduced a formal complaint. More, a delegate that day, was asked to withdraw. After some discussion, the individual articles of impeachment were approved one by one. To name a few, the Assembly charged that More had: bullied a jury into rendering an unjust verdict; mistreated judges; harassed a witness; summoned juries unlawfully; altered a charge; and missed serving in several circuit courts.”

Let’s forget for a moment that More secured his appointment as chief justice only after buying 10,000 acres of land from our illustrious Quaker founder William Penn, and how that would look today.

What we should instead consider is that these earlier 17th and 19th century legislative impeachments, involving Judges Cooper and More, mostly had not so much to do with outright and unchecked criminality, as we see today, so much as simple bad temperament

Today, as many visitors in our courtrooms can attest for themselves, literally scores of Pennsylvania judges could be impeached today for loutish, bad or rude behavior.

The reasons outright criminal behavior has undeniably increased in Pennsylvania’s judiciary in recent years makes for an interesting story of its own.

Reformers say it’s a simple matter of the breakdown of court discipline, as administered by our State Supreme Court.

And that, court critics have been saying for years, is by design.

To be continued …