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Supreme Court suspends McCaffery over porn e-mails

HARRISBURG - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court suspended Justice Seamus P. McCaffery on Monday amid allegations that he sent pornographic e-mails and threatened to entangle a fellow justice in the widening scandal after vowing not to go "down alone."

Seamus P. McCaffery, when he was sworn in as a new justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Jan. 3, 2008.  (Elizabeth Robertson / Inquirer Staff)
Seamus P. McCaffery, when he was sworn in as a new justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Jan. 3, 2008. (Elizabeth Robertson / Inquirer Staff)Read moreINQUIRER ROBERTSON

HARRISBURG - The Pennsylvania Supreme Court suspended Justice Seamus P. McCaffery on Monday amid allegations that he sent pornographic e-mails and threatened to entangle a fellow justice in the widening scandal after vowing not to go "down alone."

In a sharply worded order, four of the seven justices, citing an "immediate need" to protect the integrity of the state's courts, suspended McCaffery with pay on "an interim basis" from his $200,205-a-year job.

The court also ordered the state's Judicial Conduct Board to determine within 30 days if there is probable cause to file formal misconduct charges against the justice. The board handles judicial ethics complaints and has launched an investigation into McCaffery's e-mails.

"In my two decades of experience on this court, no other justice . . . has done as much to bring the Supreme Court into disrepute," Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille wrote in a statement released with the order. "No other justice has failed to live up to the high ethical demands required of a justice of this court or has been the constant focus of ethical lapses to the degree of Justice McCaffery."

McCaffery, 64, a former Marine and Philadelphia police officer, has apologized for sending sexually explicit e-mails, saying crude language and jokes were part of the vernacular of military and law enforcement. But he has described the messages as personal and private e-mails among friends, while condemning Castille, a longtime rival, for what he called a "vindictive pattern of attacks" against him, including the push for his suspension.

In a statement Monday night, McCaffery's spokesman, Frank Keel, said: "Today's action against Justice McCaffery should surprise no one, given Chief Justice Castille's relentless crusade to destroy his career and reputation. We will continue in our efforts to expose the malicious intent behind this effort to take down Justice McCaffery. We are confident that he will be cleared of any wrongdoing and returned to the bench soon."

The order followed a tumultuous two weeks for the high court that has included allegations of personal vendettas and stunning accusations. It also marked the latest chapter in a scandal over the sharing of sexually explicit e-mails that started in the Attorney General's Office and spread to the Supreme Court.

McCaffery and Justice J. Michael Eakin abstained from Monday's vote. Eakin last week accused McCaffery of threatening to leak to reporters pornographic and racially tinged e-mails that Eakin had received, allegedly telling Eakin he "was not going down alone."

Monday's order cited more than just the pornographic e-mails as the reason for McCaffery's suspension. It noted past allegations that he may have fixed a ticket on behalf of his wife; that his wife collected referral fees from law firms with cases before the court; and that he may have improperly made a call to a top court administrator critical of a judge handling a case involving a law firm that contributed to his campaign and also paid his wife a referral fee.

McCaffery has said he was vindicated on the ticket-fixing allegation and contends that he and his wife did nothing wrong regarding referral fees. A lawyer for McCaffery said federal authorities investigated those allegations about fees but chose not to pursue charges.

After the e-mail revelations surfaced about the justice this month, Castille urged his colleagues to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate.

In his statement Monday, Castille advocated bypassing the Judicial Conduct Board, which he said suffers from a lack of funds and other resources, and referring the matter to an outside fact-finder. The court, in its order, appointed Pittsburgh lawyer Robert L. Byer as a special counsel on the matter.

Justice Debra McCloskey Todd was the lone justice to dissent on the vote, saying she believed the matter was best left to the Judicial Conduct Board, given the acrimony in this case and the lack of any independent findings.

"Yet, today, based upon unvetted claims and allegations, a majority of our court, one of whom is deeply involved in this controversy, has suspended a fellow justice," Todd wrote. "No independent investigative body has made any findings regarding merits or credibility and . . . no formal criminal proceedings have been instituted.

"Every day this court is charged with according due process to litigants, and we faithfully carry out that constitutional obligation," she wrote. "Even a justice is entitled to due process."

Castille, a Republican, left no doubt about what he thinks of McCaffery, a Democrat who gained fame running "Eagles court" for unruly fans at Veterans Stadium, and how he has since responded to the e-mail allegations.

"The most telling pathology is that when a person is caught, or called out for his transgressions, that person does not accept blame, but instead blames others for his or her own misconduct," Castille wrote. "Those pathological symptoms describe a sociopath."

He wrote that among the pornographic e-mails that McCaffery sent, one depicted a naked 100-year-old woman and another had a video of a woman "in sexual congress with a snake."

McCaffery became the second judge in 21/2 years to be suspended by colleagues. In May 2012, Joan Orie Melvin was suspended after she was indicted on corruption charges. She resigned from the court a year later, after being convicted and shortly before her sentencing.

In calling for McCaffery's suspension, Castille has said that any judge who exchanged grossly pornographic material by e-mail, even from a personal account, might have violated the state's code of judicial ethics and could be subject to discipline.

Over the weekend, Castille also said he would have pushed for similar action against any judge who had sent graphic messages.

Castille last week released an accounting of more than 230 e-mails McCaffery sent or received between 2008 and 2012, including to at least one state employee, that contained graphic sexual images and videos. Those messages, sent from a private e-mail address, were among the messages sent or received by state employees and uncovered during Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane's review of how her predecessors handled the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse investigation.

McCaffery apologized for what he called a "lapse in judgment," but said Castille was raising a "cooked-up controversy."

The saga turned uglier when it emerged that Eakin, the appointed liaison to the Philadelphia courts, had received three pornographic and racially tinged e-mails on an anonymous private account.

Eakin blamed McCaffery for leaking the e-mails and all but accused McCaffery of blackmailing him because he did not help sway Castille's thinking. McCaffery has denied the allegations.

Castille wrote in his statement Monday that "that sort of threat borders on criminal conduct."

Those voting in favor of suspending McCaffery were three Republican justices - Castille, Thomas Saylor, and Correale Stevens - and one Democratic justice, Max Baer.

Relations between Castille and McCaffery, both Philadelphians, have been frosty since McCaffery joined the high court in 2008. By some accounts, McCaffery became upset when Castille did not name him liaison to the Philadelphia courts that year. Castille has also criticized McCaffery in connection with the referral fees paid to his wife.

McCaffery is suing The Inquirer over articles that explored those fees.

McCaffery has challenged Castille on issues that include development of the new Family Court center and his handling of the "Kids for Cash" juvenile court scandal in Luzerne County.

The pornographic e-mails scandal broke late last month, when Kane released the names of eight men who sent pornographic e-mails on state accounts and computers between 2008 and 2012, when her Republican predecessors, including Gov. Corbett, ran the office.

The eight included the head of the state police and a onetime chief of the state Department of Environmental Protection, E. Christopher Abruzzo.

Five have since resigned either their state or private jobs.

Castille wrote: "At least several of those individuals have had the decency to resign, whereas the instigator of the pornographic e-mails still draws a taxpayer's salary."

Excerpts From Statements on McCaffery

From the court order:

"The media has published reports containing allegations that: Justice McCaffery may have improperly contacted a Philadelphia Traffic Court official in connection with a traffic citation issued to his wife; Justice McCaffery may have acted in his official capacity to authorize his wife to accept hundreds of thousands of dollars in referral fees from plaintiffs' firms while she served as Justice McCaffery's administrative assistant; and Justice McCaffery may have attempted to exert influence over a judicial assignment on the Philadelphia Common Pleas bench outside the scope of his official duties.

"More recently, Justice McCaffery has publicly accepted responsibility for exchanging hundreds of sexually explicit e-mails with a member or members of the Office of Attorney General, which surfaced in the course of the attorney general's review of the handling of the Gerald Sandusky investigation."

From a concurring statement by Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille:

"The most recent misconduct of Justice McCaffery - forwarding sexually explicit pornographic e-mails to employees of the Attorney General's Office . . . has caused the Supreme Court to be held up to public ridicule. This conduct deserves the immediate action as implemented by this court today. It would be impossible for this court to function effectively while Justice McCaffery sits on this court. His so-called 'lapse in judgment' lasted, at least, for many years as an adult. It is more than a lapse in judgment - it has caused unmitigated turmoil in the justice system and has indirectly cost several state prosecutors and high-ranking state officials their public careers."

From a dissenting statement by Justice Debra McCloskey Todd:

"I strenuously dissent. It is obvious from recent events that our court is embroiled in turmoil and needs to act immediately. My disagreement with the majority of the court is with respect to what action we should take. The crisis in which we find ourselves is marked by fact-laden accusations, alleged impropriety, and obvious acrimony. This is precisely the type of conflict - perhaps the prototypical conflict - for which the citizens of our commonwealth, in response to a similar controversy over two decades ago, constitutionally created the independent Judicial Conduct Board and the Court of Judicial Discipline."

Statement of Frank Keel, spokesman for Justice Seamus P. McCaffery:

"Today's action against Justice McCaffery should surprise no one, given Chief Justice Castille's relentless crusade to destroy his career and reputation. We will continue in our efforts to expose the malicious intent behind this effort to take down Justice McCaffery. We are confident that he will be cleared of any wrongdoing and returned to the bench soon."

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CLARIFICATION: An earlier version of this story attributed a statement emailed Monday night on behalf of Justice Seamus McCaffery to his lawyer, Dion G. Rassias. On Tuesday, spokesman Frank Keel, who emailed the statement, said the remarks should have been attributed to him, not Rassias. Keel blamed the mistake on "some miscommunications in the heat of the moment."

>Inquirer.com

For more coverage of the Pennsylvania e-mail porn case, including the court opinions issued Monday regarding Justice Seamus P. McCaffery, go to inquirer.com/emailporn

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