'Kids-for-cash' panel probes watchdogs' conduct

HARRISBURG - The top attorney for the state's judicial watchdog agency told a special panel Monday that he failed to act on an anonymous 2006 complaint against one of two Luzerne County judges who would later face federal racketeering charges.

Joseph Massa, chief counsel for the Judicial Conduct Board, said he did so for innocent reasons. "There was nothing nefarious in terms of subterfuge at all," he said.

Massa was called as a witness to explain why his board had ignored the complaint against Luzerne County Judge Michael T. Conahan, who resigned two years later amid the "kids-for-cash" scandal.

Several members of the blue-ribbon panel investigating the causes of that scandal asked if Massa would have handled the complaint differently today.

He replied, "No doubt."

Massa said the oversight was the result of understaffing and limited resources for a board that reviews 600 complaints a year.

The complaint was also tabled, Massa said, because Conahan was expected to be a key witness in the board's investigation of another Luzerne County judge, Ann M. Lokuta.

A judge since 1992, Lokuta was removed from the bench in 2008 for allegations that included neglect of judicial duties, terrorizing courthouse workers, and having employees run personal errands. She has maintained she was the target of a vendetta by Conahan and the other judge caught up in the scandal, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr.

Massa's testimony capped 11 days of hearings that have stretched across nearly seven months as the state-appointed panel has examined breakdowns in the judicial system that gave rise to the scandal involving the two Luzerne County judges.

Conahan and Ciavarella are accused of sending thousands of juvenile defendants to detention centers in Luzerne and Butler Counties - many for minor infractions that experts say did not warrant jail - in return for $2.6 million in kickbacks from operators of the privately run centers.

The eight-page 2006 complaint contained allegations of cronyism and nepotism - and mentioned Conahan's friendship with a co-owner of one of the detention centers that eventually figured in the scandal.

Ciavarella and Conahan each pleaded guilty last year to fraud, but a federal judge threw out their plea agreements, saying the two had not accepted responsibility for their crimes. They are awaiting trial.

The 11-member Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice, having collected testimony from legal experts, court officials, child advocates, and defendants and their families, turned its attention Monday to the conduct of the Judicial Conduct Board, which with the Court of Judicial Discipline makes up the two-tiered system established in the 1990s to respond to charges of misconduct against judges.

The board and the special court were created in the wake of a previous judicial scandal. Justice Rolf Larsen was removed from the state Supreme Court in 1994 after his conviction for conspiring to obtain antianxiety drugs through prescriptions written in his employees' names.

Also testifying Monday was Patrick Judge, the former chairman of the Judicial Conduct Board, who had a business interest with Conahan. Judge said he disqualified himself when an investigation involving Conahan came before the board in 2007, lest he risk creating an "appearance of impropriety."

Panel member James A. Gibbons, a district judge in Lackawanna County, asked whether there was a policy for disclosure of such potential conflicts for board members.

Judge told him there was not.

Panel members also fired tough questions yesterday at Chester County lawyer Samuel Stretton - formerly a prosecutor in the state Supreme Court's lawyer disciplinary system - on what he knew about the Luzerne judges and why he had not filed a complaint.

Stretton, who has represented Lokuta and other judges and lawyers accused of misconduct, said he had heard talk of various allegations about Luzerne County courts, including nepotism, outsize settlements of civil suits, and high rates of incarceration - but didn't have enough information to "connect the dots."

Commission chairman John M. Cleland, a Superior Court judge from McKean County, said he was trying to understand why lawyers did not come forward with information in the Luzerne case or other cases involving possible misconduct by judges.

Simple, said Stretton: fear of retaliation.

"The intimidation factor was fairly strong in Luzerne County," he said. "If you wanted to practice up there, you kept your mouth shut."