Five years ago, as federal agents closed in on his multimillion-dollar kickback scheme, Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. admitted railroading juveniles through court hearings and violating state court rules by failing to inform them of basic rights.
Now, with Mr. Ciavarella convicted and sentenced to 28 years in prison and thousands of his tainted juvenile cases dismissed, a pair of Luzerne County attorneys say they have uncovered evidence showing Mr. Ciavarella applied the same brand of justice to adult court.
Mr. Ciavarella's behavior, including his propensity to reduce a required dialogue about a defendant's rights to mere "bits and pieces," could undermine guilty and no-contest pleas in thousands of adult court cases, attorneys Thomas M. Marsilio and Lawrence J. Kansky said.
In one case, Mr. Marsilio said, Mr. Ciavarella spoke to a drug trafficking defendant for 30 seconds before accepting a guilty plea that led to a five- to 10-year prison sentence.
"It was one, two, three out," Mr. Marsilio said.
Mr. Ciavarella entered adult cases with the same zero-tolerance mentality he embraced in juvenile court and did not properly inform adult defendants of their rights, as required by law, because he already viewed them as convicts, Mr. Kansky said.
"That just carries over in his thinking with the adults," Mr. Kansky said Friday. "They were guilty first and foremost in his mind, so he didn't care if he shortchanged the colloquies to minutes and seconds of what he was supposed to."
Mr. Marsilio and Mr. Kansky said they found Mr. Ciavarella's alleged adult court transgressions after reviewing transcripts from a sampling of guilty plea hearings handled by Mr. Ciavarella. They outlined their findings Friday in a letter, "Injustice Lives on in Luzerne County," in which they called for a reversal of all of the former judge's adult court adjudications.
Mr. Ciavarella's attorney, Al Flora, said Friday night he was unaware of Mr. Marsilio and Mr. Kansky's allegations, but cautioned that judges often abridge their on-the-record dialogues with defendants, known as colloquies, to save time and accommodate heavy caseloads.
Judges also often incorporate a written colloquy into the case record. Those documents go for a dozen pages or more with questions designed to gauge a defendant's understanding of his or her rights.
"A judge often will say to the defendant, 'Do you understand everything that was written in the colloquy?' " Mr. Flora said. "You might have a plea agreement which calls for 15 days' probation. The judge, a lot of times, won't go through a detailed colloquy with something like that."
President Judge Thomas F. Burke Jr. said he, too, was unaware of the allegations and declined to comment because the matter may eventually come before his court.
Contact the writer: msisak@citizensvoice.com, @cvmikesisak on Twitter
Federal prosecutors charged Mr. Ciavarella and ex-judge Michael T. Conahan on Jan. 26, 2009, saying they pocketed $2.8 million from the backers of a pair of for-profit juvenile detention facilities.
A jury convicted Mr. Ciavarella, 62, in February 2011 on 12 of 27 counts, including racketeering and conspiracy. He is serving a 28-year prison sentence. Mr. Conahan pleaded guilty in July 2010 to a racketeering charge. He is serving a 17½-year prison sentence.
Arthur E. Grim, the senior judge appointed by the state Supreme Court to review and overturn thousands of Mr. Ciavarella's juvenile court sentences, said his behavior sabotaged the goals of the juvenile justice system, harmed the children the system was designed to help.
The same, Mr. Kansky said, happened in adult court.
"This is a mirror image of what happened to the juveniles," Mr. Kansky said. "Our letter is just the tip of the iceberg."
Contact the writer: msisak@citizensvoice.com, @cvmikesisak on Twitter