Academic

JACOB SULLUM: Corrupt Pennsylvania Judges Withdraw Guilty Pleas. ?Last week Mark Ciavarella and Mi?

By Glenn Reynolds

JACOB SULLUM: Corrupt Pennsylvania Judges Withdraw Guilty Pleas. “Last week Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan, the former Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, judges who admitted taking millions of dollars in kickbacks from the operator of two juvenile detention centers, withdrew their guilty pleas after a federal judge rejected their agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Under that deal, which called for sentences of about seven years each, Ciavarella and Conahan pleaded guilty to tax evasion and honest services fraud (which federal law defines as a ’scheme or artifice to deprive another [in this case, taxpayers] of the intangible right of honest services’). But they never admitted the most outrageous aspects of their scheme, which seems to be why U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik rejected the plea agreement.”

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on September 03, 2009 (boomark / email).