Ummm, no. Just no. It was his crimes that ruined his rep. His reputation wasn't marred by media coverage, prosecutors or investigatory practices as he claims; He ruined it for himself by accepting kickbacks & making bad decisions on the bench, although Ciavarella maintains that the illegal kickbacks had nothing to do with his unprecedented & harsh sentencing habits.
Mark Ciavarella Jr. was a Luzerne County judge from 1995 until his March 2009 resignation. It all started to unravel for him when his cohort, Judge Michael Conahan, became entagled in another investigation. Luzerne County Judge Ann Lokuta was the subject of judicial disciplinary action in 2006 and mounted a defense that the allegations against her were the result of a conspiracy led by Conahan. Lokuta's story reads like a D-List cable channel soap, complete with ties to mobsters and corrupt judges cheekishly winking at people whose cases got moved to the "right" courtroom.
Charges were filed against Ciavarella and Conahan in January 2009, based on evidence that the two funneled children into privately-owned juvenile detention centers paying the judges kickbacks, hence the "Cash for Kids" moniker. The scheme was pretty involved and included styming funding to the county's own juvenile detention facility as well as outrageous harsh sentences for juvenile offenders, many of whom were in court for very minor offenses and some as young as 10 years old.
We'll probably never know the full extent of the damage caused by this extraordinary corruption although the civil litigation will offer the public a glimpse into the lives destroyed by the criminality and greed of Ciavarella, Conahan and their co-conspirators. Roughly 4,000 of Ciavarella's convictions were vacated by the state Supreme Court but they have committed wrongs which will be impossible to right. The one small consolation to the many victims of these crimes is that Ciavarella was just sentenced to 28 years in prison for his many crimes.
Mark Ciavarella Jr. was a Luzerne County judge from 1995 until his March 2009 resignation. It all started to unravel for him when his cohort, Judge Michael Conahan, became entagled in another investigation. Luzerne County Judge Ann Lokuta was the subject of judicial disciplinary action in 2006 and mounted a defense that the allegations against her were the result of a conspiracy led by Conahan. Lokuta's story reads like a D-List cable channel soap, complete with ties to mobsters and corrupt judges cheekishly winking at people whose cases got moved to the "right" courtroom.
Charges were filed against Ciavarella and Conahan in January 2009, based on evidence that the two funneled children into privately-owned juvenile detention centers paying the judges kickbacks, hence the "Cash for Kids" moniker. The scheme was pretty involved and included styming funding to the county's own juvenile detention facility as well as outrageous harsh sentences for juvenile offenders, many of whom were in court for very minor offenses and some as young as 10 years old.
We'll probably never know the full extent of the damage caused by this extraordinary corruption although the civil litigation will offer the public a glimpse into the lives destroyed by the criminality and greed of Ciavarella, Conahan and their co-conspirators. Roughly 4,000 of Ciavarella's convictions were vacated by the state Supreme Court but they have committed wrongs which will be impossible to right. The one small consolation to the many victims of these crimes is that Ciavarella was just sentenced to 28 years in prison for his many crimes.
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