Posted: Friday, 20 November 2009 11:11AM
Judges Must Judge Judge
Steve Corbett Reporting
Friday, November 20, 2009
I did not expect former Luzerne County Judge Ann Lokuta to testify in her own behalf Tuesday in Harrisburg when the judges on the state Court of Judicial Discipline offered her the chance to make her case.
True to form, Lokuta’s unpredictability surfaced.
But rather than exhibit the irregular behavior that helped these same judges previously decide to boot her from the bench, the former judge spoke clearly and made sense in her appeal to be reinstated. With two lawyers by her side to advise her, she stood in a cavernous Dauphin County courtroom and spoke into the microphone.
One judge asked what sanctions, other than banishment, she thought appropriate.
Rather than suggest further punishment, Lokuta explained that her life the past year without salary or medical benefits, as well as being viewed as a poison to the judicial system, was sanction enough.
The only woman on the board began to affirmatively shake her head.
Then crotchety judge and Philadelphia lawyer legend Richard Sprague asked Lokuta the big question.
What do you want?
Lokuta simply said she wants to serve. She wants to put to good use the lessons she has learned about herself and the criminal justice system during her exile and her shame.
Lokuta said she was not vindictive, as some have suggested – including at least one disciplinary judge – and that she even avoided driving by the courthouse for fear that somebody might misinterpret her presence.
Once Sprague asked what Lokuta wanted, I sensed a great change in the judicial temperament in the room. Sprague is not one to compromise unless he sees some benefit to a willing negotiation. Still, I have no idea what benefit Sprague sees in granting Lokuta a reprieve. But I know he has one. There’s always a method to Sprague’s madness.
The state Supreme Court ordered that the disciplinary court revisit Lokuta’s case because of the pervasive judicial corruption that has exploded at the Luzerne County courthouse.
Four people involved in the ongoing corruption probe testified against Lokuta. Two of those four witnesses were former Luzerne County president judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, who face trial on federal racketeering charges.
Another witness against Lokuta, Conahan’s cousin and former court administrator William Sharkey, has pleaded guilty to a federal crime. Yet another witness against Lokuta, former county Prothonotary Jill Moran, has not been charged with a crime but agreed to resign from office and cooperate with federal investigators in their search for justice in an unjust system that also snared her former law partner in a guilty plea.
Lokuta has argued all along that she had long ago contacted the FBI about improprieties in the county judiciary and that Conahan and Ciavarella conspired to set her up and have her removed.
Merit exists in her argument.
But had Lokuta not been as volatile as witnesses claimed, Conahan and Ciavarella would have had a much more difficult time getting what they wanted from the disciplinary court.
Conahan even had a business relationship with the chairman of the Judicial Conduct Board that first heard complaints against Lokuta and referred the charges to the disciplinary board for trial.
That board member, Pat Judge, is now a member of the disciplinary court. Although he was not part of Tuesday’s proceedings, his specter hung like an evil spirit over the room.
A lawyer for the Judicial Conduct Board all but ran into the elevator after the hearing to avoid answering questions about Judge that I fired at him about what seems like a clear conflict of interest that helped stack the deck against Lokuta. Cornered in the elevator, the lawyer finally acknowledged that neither he nor members of the board of staff knew about the business relationship between Judge and Conahan until they heard about it in the press.
If that’s true, Judge failed to disclose a serious ethical breach to his own colleagues, an omission that clearly colored the proceedings against Lokuta from the start.
I expect the court to reinstate Lokuta with some kind of sanction or probation.
And, if the state judicial discipline court needs something else to pursue, the judges should start judging Judge and his own relationship to the ongoing federal corruption probe.
Judge remains a political boss at the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority where management early this year conspired to cover up a federal crime. The WVSA executive director personally told me that Judge knew about and agreed with the decision not to report a federal felony to federal law enforcement officials when WVSA managers found out that a WVSA worker stole money.
That employee, former magistrate Karen Holly, has pleaded guilty in federal court and awaits sentencing.
I await more arrests at WVSA and the return of Lokuta to the bench.
Both actions are warranted.
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Corbett
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