patrick.net

https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1854615830358614487

As folks sort the stack of Biden’s 1,500 pardons, some real stinkers have surfaced. Local WGAL Pennsylvania ran a story yesterday headlined, “Kids-for-cash judge's sentence commuted by Biden.” Get ready to get angry.




Michael Conahan, 72, a former Luzerne County judge, was sentenced to prison 10 years ago for running a “kids-for-cash” racket with former judge Mark Ciavarella. While receiving $2.8 million in bribes and kickbacks from developers, the two judges funneled kids as young as 8 into a harsh private correctional facility that was paying them under the table. Under cover of a “zero tolerance” policy, the two men unlawfully jailed thousands of children with shockingly strict sentences.

For instance, Judge Conahan sentenced one teenager with no prior legal problems to three months in juvenile detention for creating a MySpace page that mocked an assistant principal at her school.

Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court ultimately vacated over 4,000 juvenile convictions involving more than 2,300 kids after Conahan and Ciavarella’s schemes were finally put to a stop. Conahan got 17 years and Ciavarella got 28; the two judges were ordered to pay back $200 million in restitution to the victims. I found no evidence that any payments were ever made and I doubt it happened.

The story was a pretty big deal, although you can be forgiven not having heard of it before. Here is a link to one of the documentaries. Here is a link to one of the “Kids for Cash” books, this one published this year, titled “Shackled: A Tale of Wronged Kids, Rogue Judges, and a Town that Looked Away.” The scandal was widely covered by local media at the time (2010-11) and for years afterward, as the civil case worked its way through the system. For example, here’s a headline from the Morning Call, 2021:

'He screwed up my life': More than 300 survivors of 'Kids for
Cash' scandal tell horror stories in civil case against judges in
Luzerne County

Unsurprisingly, useless corporate media has shown little interest in the salacious story, which should be perfect media material. Why do you suppose that is?

Anyway, the notorious, disgraced judge Conahan —while he sat on the bench, “The Boss”— was fortunate enough to be jailed in blue Miami and have high blood pressure. Ciavarella was not so lucky. He was not in a covid “high risk” category and so remains in prison in North Carolina. (Judge Ciavarella’s application for compassionate covid release was denied.)

But Judge Conahan was “compassionately” released to home confinement in 2020 as part of Pennsylvania’s pandemic mitigation strategy.

Biden’s blanket pardon broadly swept up non-violent prisoners who were on covid home release, which included Judge Conahan. Conahan is now a free man, liberated even from home confinement. Judge Conahan received the leniency he never showed to the children who appeared before the “no-nonsense” judge in his “zero tolerance” courtroom.

Looking at the cast of criminals moronically swept into Biden’s pardon, my working hypothesis is there was one particular crook who Biden wanted to pardon, but the case was so ugly that Joe pardoned 1,500 of them, to hide the one he really wanted. You know, strategic ambiguity.

I don’t want to hear any complaints from Democrats over who Trump pardons or how many.

Ban private prisons because they bribe judges to feed them more prisoners.