Witnesses before a state panel Monday portrayed former Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr.'s courtroom as a place where kids were bound for jail before they were found guilty, defense attorneys were lacking in half the cases and an 11-year-old could be led away in handcuffs for failing to pay a $488 fine.
Former Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. treated juveniles who appeared in his courtroom as vacuous pawns, ignoring their medical conditions and emotional frailties as he had them handcuffed, shackled and locked away, the juveniles and their parents testified Monday.
The so-called "zero-tolerance" judge reluctantly released a 14-year-old girl to house arrest after seizures nearly killed her, the girl's mother told a state panel investigating the Luzerne County kids-for-cash scheme.
Note: I actually live here amidst all this corruption. I believe no one here can get a fair trial. Every single person who was employed in the Courthouse during the "Kids for Cash" should be fired - clean house! Call it collateral damage. If you think that's not fair, too bad! Everyone must go! Period! Everyone who's still on a school board of someone charged in this corruption probe must go! Collateral damage! Too bad! Everyone must go! Everyone who got a teaching job and is a friend or relative of someone on a school board must go!
Citizen's Voice: Juveniles, parents testify before commission about effect of detention, court proceedings
Citizen's Voice: Probation officer, public defender describe Ciavarella's handling of court
Citizen's Voice: Luzerne County FED corruption probe page; 21 people charged so far and counting...
Times Leader: Parents, juveniles testify damage was done
Times Leader: Luzerne County Judges Page
Arrogant, inept DA who wants to retry 50 of the "Kids for Cash". Maybe she can request Judge Ciavarella make a guest appearance to retry them and throw them back in Camp Adams or PA Child Care!
DA wants about 50 juvenile cases retried
Previous to yesterday's testimony of the parents of "Kids for Cash", Luzerne County officials repeated "I was unaware":
When Luzerne County District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll challenged the 11 members of the state-appointed Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice to "tell me what you do when you have a judge who is a crook," she was promptly interrupted by the questioner-in-chief. "You report him," interjected John M. Cleland, the commission chairman and a judge on the state Superior Court.
Philly.com: Luzerne officials deny knowing of abuse
Audio of the previous testimony of Luzerne County officials: The best of "I was unaware"
My grandmother got a taste of the corrupt Luzerne County courts many years ago, under Judge Patrick Toole, the father of underinsured motorist scamster Judge Michael J. Toole. He's still a judge. Would you want to go in front of any of these judges that were there during the "Kids for Cash" scandal???
Read about how my 90-year-old Russian immigrant grandmother got screwed years ago in the now proven beyond a doubt corrupt Luzerne County courts click here. Corrupt underinsured auto scamster Judge Michael Toole's father, Judge Patrick Toole, presided over her case in which the Kenzakoski Brothers Construction bought the land out from under her and bulldozed her home to the ground, or "squashed" it as one of the Kenzakoski's said in the papers at the time, and she didn't receive ONE PENNY for it. Of course, this could only happen in the courts of Luzerne County. She wasn't a friend or relative of anyone in the Courthouse of Corruption. Just a 90-year-old Russian immigrant who was widowed from my grandfather dying from Black Lung in the mines and raised 7 children on her own. They plowed her home and yard down, with decades of carefully nurtured fruit trees and gardens all over, and she didn't get a penny of compensation. She wasn't "connected", just like so many others of us in Luzerne County. Only in Luzerne County!
