First porn, now threats?

HEY, HOW do you like your judicial porn scandals?

If you answered "ever-worsening and increasingly juvenile," you're in luck!

State Supreme Court Justices J. Michael Eakin and Seamus McCaffery issued dueling statements yesterday over who-said-what-to-whom during a recent conversation the two had about the email-porn debacle that has consumed Harrisburg for much of the last month.

In his statement, Eakin indicated that he was threatened by McCaffery during a phone call Thursday morning.

Eakin claimed that McCaffery urged him to convince state Supreme Court Chief Justice Ron Castille to retract recent criticisms of McCaffery - or else smutty images that had been sent to Eakin's Yahoo email account by others would see the light of day.

"I told him I would not do so even if it were possible," Eakin said in his statement.

"He repeated that I had to, and that he 'needed an answer' by noon [Thursday] to prevent release of the emails involving my account."

Castille's office said earlier this week that the state Attorney General's Office found more than 200 pornographic emails had been sent or received by McCaffery in recent years, including some that were forwarded to state employees.

Eakins said McCaffery told him he "was not going down alone."

McCaffery released a three-paragraph response that amounted to one big nah-uh - with some additional finger-pointing thrown in for good measure.

McCaffery said he reached out to Eakin to say he'd heard "strong rumors" that his colleague had a personal email account that contained hundreds of sexually explicit emails and racially offensive images.

"Although he was extremely agitated and upset, Justice Eakin told me he appreciated the call and the 'heads-up,' " McCaffery said, "and specifically lamented the fact that this whole email controversy has been Chief Justice Castille's doing."

In fact, McCaffery claimed, Eakin confided that he reached out to Castille on Monday to urge the chief justice to stop releasing information about the porn scandal.

McCaffery said he "unequivocally" denies threatening or coercing Eakin.

But wait - the borderline teenage exchanges didn't end there.

Eakin released another statement last night, calling McCaffery's explanation "self-victimizing" and "incomplete, and inaccurate in many details and specifics."

William P. Fedullo, the chancellor of the Philadelphia Bar Association, also chimed in yesterday, noting that the 13,000-member organization wants a special master or special counsel to be appointed to investigate the pornographic emails that McCaffery sent and received.

Fedullo said the Judicial Conduct Board should review the matter immediately.

"Conduct of this nature, at a minimum, causes the appearance of impropriety and potentially questions Justice McCaffery's impartiality having to do with any number of cases," he said.

The porn scandal came to light as a result of Attorney General Kathleen Kane's decision to review the way her predecessor, Gov. Corbett, handled the investigation into convicted child molester Jerry Sandusky.

Kane's probe revealed that numerous pornographic emails had been shared by some of Corbett's top brass while he was attorney general.

Two former Corbett deputies, Department of Environmental Protection Secretary Chris Abruzzo and Glenn Parno, DEP's chief counsel, resigned when their archived inboxes went public.

Randy Feathers, another former Corbett top deputy who was also caught up in the porn scandal, retired Wednesday from his post on the state Board of Probation and Parole. Corbett had previously asked him to resign.