Posted: Friday, 04 December 2009 11:39AM
Feds Put Dirty Judge Back On Bench
Steve Corbett Reporting
Friday, December 04, 2009
Uncle Sam has let us down.
Our icon of liberty and justice for all put a dirty judge back on the bench even after the judge admitted that he was a criminal and an enemy of America.
Of course Sam is make-believe. So we can’t blame a symbol for this real-life attack on justice. We can’t hold our bearded image in a stars-and-striped studded top hat responsible for this assault on the ongoing fight against public corruption in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
But we can blame living and breathing federal prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania who decided for whatever the reason to allow Luzerne County Judge Michael Toole to resume his judicial duties even after he signed a guilty plea agreement on September 25.
Since acting U.S. Attorney Dennis Pfannenschmidt refuses to return my calls or address the issue we can only speculate.
But Pfannenschmidt should know that we’re not done with him yet.
Never in three decades of writing about crime have I encountered a decision even close to Pfannenschmidt’s decision to put an admitted criminal judge on the bench to continue hearing criminal cases, including a death penalty homicide case.
It was bad enough when federal prosecutors in New York accepted Mafia hit man Sammy “The Bull” Gravano’s guilty plea agreement after he admitted to 19 killings. But they needed him to get John Gotti. Gravano did five years, got released and continued his life of crime before returning to prison on drug charges.
I understand that trade-offs sometimes must be made. But you’ve got to draw the line somewhere. And bargaining with the very core concept of justice that drives the law enforcement mission and the heart of the nation is just not acceptable.
Pfannenschmidt traded the untradeable. For that he must be held accountable.
Frankly, this decision seems like a career ender to me.
Putting an admitted criminal judge back on the bench does as much damage to the public trust as the very crimes to which Toole has admitted committing. Helping to poison the public trust is not part of the official Department of Justice mission.
Nor is complicity in toxic public service part of the American Way.
Even if a hundred more arrests, guilty pleas and convictions result from Toole’s cooperation, Pfannenschmidt and whoever agreed with him were wrong. You simply can’t justify this one.
To make matters worse, by refusing comment or explanation, Pfannenschmidt and his enablers are rubbing the noses of the very people they are paid and duty-bound to help into the scum of public corruption.
Toole is a very bad man.
The feds know that Toole is a very bad man.
But when they got him in a room, they did not tell Toole that part of his guilty plea must include telling the president judge that he will not be returning to work. Even lying about why he could not resume his judicial career would have been better than taking the bench the way he did and ruling on matters of law that impact people’s lives for almost two months after admitting his guilt.
Toole is an admitted liar anyway.
U.S. attorneys and their public corruption teams are inextricably tied to honesty. Instead of telling Toole that he could not resume his duties, the very people we trust to make the public trust better have made it worse.
Actually, Pfannenschmidt had a way out. All he had to do was tell Toole that he would not sign off on the plea agreement until after Toole turned, came through and offered whatever help he could offer to the investigation. If that meant wiring up the judge and sending him out colleague hunting, so be it. My guess is that the feds did that anyway. I say this because the feds have recommended a reduction in sentence because of Toole’s cooperation.
By not signing off on the guilty plea agreement, Pfannenschmidt could have honestly said that because he never formally cut a deal he did not authorize putting an admitted criminal judge back on the bench.
Frankly, though, that’s a stretch, as well because once Toole admitted guilt in any way to federal prosecutors, whether formally or informally, prosecutors were obligated to protect the integrity of the system, the law and the country.
But once they knew, they failed in a mission of historic proportion.
Pfannenschmidt knew.
Now we know.
It’s time to subpoena Uncle Sam.
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