The high court threw out more than five years' worth of juvenile cases heard by disgraced former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella, who is charged with accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks to send youths to private detention centers.

The Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center, which represents some of the youths, said that the court's order covers as many as 6,500 cases. The justices barred any possibility of retrial in all but a fraction of them.

"This is exactly the relief these kids needed," said Marsha Levick, the center's legal director. "It's the most serious judicial-corruption scandal in our history, and the court took an extraordinary step in addressing it."

Children routinely came before Ciavarella without lawyers for hearings that lasted only a few minutes. Ciavarella also failed to question young defendants to make sure that they fully understood the consequences of waiving counsel and pleading guilty, showing "complete disregard for the constitutional rights of the juveniles," the Supreme Court said.

After being found delinquent, the youths were often shackled and taken to private jails, the owner of which allegedly was paying bribes to the judge. Federal prosecutors have said that Ciavarella and another Luzerne County judge, Michael Conahan, took a total of $2.8 million in payoffs.

"Ciavarella's admission that he received these payments, and that he failed to disclose his financial interests arising from the development of the juvenile facilities, thoroughly undermines the integrity of all juvenile proceedings before Ciavarella," the Supreme Court said.

The judges pleaded guilty in February to fraud and tax evasion in a deal with prosecutors that called for a sentence of 87 months in prison. But the deal was rejected in August by Senior U.S. District Judge Edward M. Kosik, who said that the two hadn't fully accepted responsibility for the crimes, and the ex-judges switched their pleas to not guilty.

A federal grand jury then returned a 48-count racketeering indictment against the judges, who await trial.

The Supreme Court had previously overturned hundreds of juvenile convictions involving low-level offenses. Yesterday's ruling covered all cases heard by Ciavarella from 2003 into 2008, including ones involving more serious crimes.

"We fully agree that, given the nature and extent of the taint, this Court simply cannot have confidence that any juvenile matter adjudicated by Ciavarella during this period was tried in a fair and impartial manner," the court wrote.