Posted: Wednesday, 11 February 2009 11:39AM
Keep This Disease From Spreading
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tomorrow’s the big day.
Two disgraced Luzerne County judges will stand before the federal court and hopefully keep their word by signing off on formal guilty pleas on public corruption charges that will put them behind bars for at least seven years.
Keeping their word will be tough.
If what prosecutors say about them is true, they have spent years lying, deceiving and pillaging the public trust. If what prosecutors say is true, I wouldn’t be surprised if Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan renege on every vow they made to the government, their families and themselves.
These guys seem pathological to the point of perversion. Disturbed and diseased, their shameful lack of integrity, character and morality has gutted the law and attacked the system upon which we depend for community fairness.
Selfishly self-absorbed, they obsessed themselves with themselves – just us – rather than with justice.
And for that they must pay.
An example must be made of these two once upstanding men in the community, men to whom power became a self-destructive drug. But they didn’t just hurt themselves. They hurt countless others, including children who might have been victimized in a courtroom of juvenile injustice.
If what prosecutors say is true, of course.
I can’t wait until tomorrow.
Because if these two accused criminals – who have at already admitted guilt through a plea agreement – once and for all accept the conditions of that agreement, I can finally call them criminals. I can freely and forever call them bandits, desperados and crooks.
Once and for all they will stand as the public villains they are.
Ciavarella and Conahan are not nice people. Their friends deceive themselves into believing otherwise, pining and whining about how such good men could have gone bad.
These friends should not waste their time on such drivel. Let prison counselors and pastors shepherd these two scoundrels toward repentance. Instead, friends of the accused should work to make sure that others who walk in the footsteps of these two phonies are found out and also punished.
That’s another reason why I can’t wait until tomorrow.
I want every other crooked Northeastern Pennsylvania elected and appointed public official to take notice of what is happening in the federal courthouse in Scranton. That goes for lawyers, too, who might get snared in the wide net of the continuing public corruption probe.
Talk of case-fixing has begun to take on a life of its own. A Philadelphia legal journal has already reported the rumors that have been circulating throughout hard coal country with the same flash of excitement that sparked rumors about the rogue judges.
Sources say that federal target letters have gone out and some big names are attached to those rumors.
Maybe some of them will also go to jail.
And let’s not forget about former court administrator William Sharkey, who also is expected to formally plead guilty to embezzlement and be sentenced to prison.
If Ciavarella and Conahan do plead guilty, they will likely remain free until a pre-sentence investigation is complete. The judge in their case should reconsider this courtesy. Like violent criminals or those considered a flight risk, Ciavarella and Conahan should be incarcerated immediately to begin their sentence.
Without harsh examples, other public officials will be more inclined to trivialize the consequences of using the system like they own it rather than serve it. If the punishment truly fit the crime, these men should go away forever.
Violating the public trust is that severe a breech of public confidence.
These men must be humiliated and shamed. Their license to practice law ever again should be permanently lifted. They must never be allowed to hold public office. Their pensions should remain in the public coffers. They should be forced to register the way sex offenders must register – obligated to tell neighbors if they plan to live in the same block – or city, for that matter.
Instead they will be given too much consideration.
And they will likely continue to act as if they are better than the people they were once sworn to serve – a pathetic symptom of their deep-rooted sickness.
Tomorrow’s a big day all right.
The big quarantine begins.
And the hunt for a cure continues.
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Corbett
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