Hah - I meant as a sanctioned act of justice, of course.
I would have preferred that he receive multiple life sentences.
This is an mp3 file of a panel discussion at the National Constitution Center that may shed some light on the sheer depravity of Ciavarella’s actions. It features Gerald Gault, on whose behalf In re Gault was argued. It also features a girl named Hillary Transue, who appeared before Ciavarella in a delinquency matter, having been accused of starting a MySpace page lampooning her vice principal. The discussion is well worth listening to.
I’ve also been reading some of the comments on the Times-Leader website, and some of those reflect a very scary mentality. Some people believe that Ciavarella and Conahan may have been wrong to take the money, but those kids were troublemakers who deserved every day they spent in detention, and how dare they and their families claim otherwise. (Most of them aren’t that eloquent.)
This whole sorry scandal scares the hell out of me.
I don’t6 know if this has been mentioned already, but there was a good Law & Order episode about this. The judges should be sentenced by the people they sentenced. Disgusting.
You fool, capital punishment is wrong, always and everywhere.
Plus, any execution process they were subjected to wouldn’t last as long as they deserve to be made to regret what they did.
I read the link in the OP and cannot get the mp3 to work so I haven’t seen an answer to this question - did the judges give sentences beyond what was legal? Are attorneys not a requirement in juvie court? The way this reads, it sounds like what was going on was illegal beyond the kick-backs, and I’m wondering how that could be given how long it went on.
Besides, had the parents been responsible, they never would have had children they could not afford in the first place, rather than having the trouble-making spawn that they inflicted on society.
If you noticed, the OP was from two years ago before the full extent was known. Read some more recent posts, and marvel at the dozens of complicit douchebags in the county justice system, sheriff’s office, and schools.
I read all of the more recent posts and have only seen discussion of the sentence handed down to the judge. If there was something regarding sentences beyond what was legal, or whether attorneys are not a requirement in juvie court I didn’t see it. I’m just wondering how this could go on if the judge was sitting there in the courtroom flagrantly breaking the law.
The judges were flagrantly violating the law outside the court room – they were taking cash to convict kids and sentence them to these detention centers. Inside the courtroom, they don’t have to do anything that gives the appearance of illegality – just listen, convict and sentence. Even if the conviction is overturned in some cases, there’s no real negative consequences for the judges.
To sum up, children have the same rights to due process under the Fourteenth Amendment that adults get. (The initial case is In re Gault, which I linked to above.) The problem here was that the judges were not permitting the children who appeared before them to have lawyers, parents or any other representation. They also abused their discretion when it came time for sentencing; they ignored sentencing recommendations and gave punishment that was far disproportionate for the relatively trivial offenses presented before them. The outrage comes not only from the bribes these men took, but their abject abuse of power. Essentially, they were running a kangaroo court for the sole purpose of sending kids to the private detention facilities so they’d get the kickbacks. (If you want to listen to the audio, try this link and search for “Gault”. I didn’t test the mp3 link before I linked to it.)
Unfortunately, this is what happens when you a) farm out school discipline to the juvenile justice system instead of taking care of disciplinary problems at school, and b) privatize the system such that there is incentive to abuse power like they did.
No one else has been sentenced yet, but there are a number of convictions pending sentencing.
Also, attorneys aren’t required, same as adult court–but the biggest issue was that some/all of the kids never were informed they were entitled to one.
As in, telling them “no, you cannot have representation”? :eek:
I don’t think it’s the link, it’s probably my computer as I am using a very “stripped down” one - don’t even have Word!
OK, looks like I missed this too - all these kids were in court for things that happened at school??? I saw the bit about the MySpace page, but I didn’t realize that all of these were school issues. That is crazy.
Don’t they verify in court that the right to an attorney was waived? Oh, wait, the judge would do that… Hmm.
As Zeriel said, the kids weren’t told they could have representation.
Hillary’s offense was that she had a MySpace page that made fun of her assistant principal, and the most that should have happened was a day or two suspension from school and a stern lecture from the principal, as well as an apology to the assistant principal. I don’t know that this was a pattern, exactly, but out of all of the thousands of kids whose convictions were overturned, some of them had to have done stuff at school that should have been punished at school, not through the courts. (But farming out discipline to the juvenile justice system does happen. If I remember in the morning, I’ll look for some cites.)
Where were their parents - weren’t they told what was going on? I’m just having trouble wrapping my mind around this kind of obvious abuse of power, right out in the open. Or is juvie court not public?
If you have time - I don’t need actual proof, just details so it might make some sense…if possible.
I can’t thank you enough for the link to that discussion. You totally fucking rock.
Thanks from me as well. Very interesting discussion,
How did you link the audio to the corrupt judges? The county is mentioned, but not the judge’s name. Also, it’s real clear the lawyers were still a bit mystified how such an inane act got escalated up to what amounts to a prison sentence, and now we know – the judge was puming kids like her into the system for cash. Also, when confronted by competent attorneys, he caved almost immediately, because he knew at least part of his ruling was indefensible.
(For this who haven’t listened, before the beginning of her hearing, Transue’s mom was asked to sign a waiver of her daughter’s right to counsel. She did sign, and later said she didn’t understand what she was signing. But according to the lawyers on this program, PA law explicitly says that parents cannot waive this right, only the child can, and the child wasn’t asked. And it was real clear that the judge knew this later on when actual lawyers show up for an appeal.)
They should bring those fucking judges here to Philly and let our flash mobs give them some justice.
This shit is unbelievable!!!
It worked for me.
The discussion I linked to took place in 2007 or 2008, before the scandal broke. I didn’t find a link to Ciavarella until I googled Hillary Transue’s name to find out how her case was resolved.
Here is one example of what I was referring to when I talked about schools farming out discipline to the justice system. Many schools and school districts have mandatory zero-tolerance policies about problems, like fighting, that used to be resolved by the school. Now schools are forced by law or by policy to let the police handle these offenses, which establishes the pipelines that Ciavarella et al. exploited. This article discusses a study about school discipline in Texas that was released last month. The article cites a statistic that only 3% of students who were removed from the classroom were removed for a legitimately criminal offense; the remaining 97% were simply violations of the school conduct code. Finally, this press release describes an initiative of the federal government to reduce this school-to-prison pipeline by improving disciplinary practices and finding something that works.
Ciavarella et al. were smart enough to exploit this pipeline, but dumb and arrogant enough to be caught.