Student Satirist Gets 3 Months; the Judge, Likely More 689
ponraul writes "When Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., 58, sentenced Hillary Transue, 17, on a harassment charge stemming from a MySpace parody of her high school's assistant principal, Hillary expected to be let off with a stern lecture; instead, the Wilkes-Barre, PA area teen got three months in a commercially operated juvenile detention center. In a reversal of fortune, Ciavarella and his colleague, Judge Conahan, 56, find themselves trying to plea-bargain an 87-month sentence in Federal correctional facilities relating to a kick-back scheme that netted the pair $2.6 Million and PA Child Care 5000 inmates." True poetic justice would be for these corrupt, callous judges to serve their sentences in the same kind of environment to which they were happy to dispatch juvenile defendants.
There is actually (Score:5, Informative)
The judge has has his pension and pay terminated [standardspeaker.com]. I'm from around that area and it's actually big talk. If you search through the Standard Speaker site you'll see some comments from kids that were sent there.
An AC says before if these marks are still on the records for the kids. Well why wouldn't they be? Just because the sentencing was wrong doesn't mean the crime wasn't committed.
Re:Recourse (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about the kids? (Score:4, Informative)
Juvenile records are sealed when you reach the age of majority (18), and can neither be looked at (theoretically) nor used against you (again, theoretically) as an adult.
Re:Only 87 months? (Score:5, Informative)
They are all being reviewed [standardspeaker.com].
3. Whoever paid the bribes, and whoever authorized them, and whoever knew about this business model and kept quiet, also need to be tried.
They are actually the ones that turned them in [standardspeaker.com].
Re:Poetic justice? (Score:3, Informative)
Stephenson's Snow Crash [wikipedia.org] had 'em in 1992. I'm sure he was far from the first.
Re:There is actually (Score:4, Informative)
Yes but in these cases, a judge had the choice for leniency especially when the offender had no records. In the article, the judges sentenced juveniles to harsher penalties than even the prosecutors wanted in some cases. Satirizing your school principal shouldn't get you 90 days in a center. Getting into a fight at school was also 90 days. In both cases neither defendant had previous records.
Re:Poetic justice? (Score:5, Informative)
Back when he was President, the Office of Management and Budget first cam up with Circular A-76 [google.com]. It describes what is, and is not, an "inherently governmental activity". If it is inherently governmental, then an actual government employee must do it. Things like signing contracts, signing checks or handing out money, formally making arrests, sentencing convicts. But other than those kinds of things, a contractor can be used, since the work is essentially just administrative and not decision making. It is a bit of a slippery scale, and politics jumps in there too, but that is the basis for it.
Usually A-76 is just used to decide if a US government agency should be closed, downsized and contracted out. But the flip side of it is that if an agency wants to expend, they can use it for justifying hiring a contractor to do the extra work. Ever since Reagan this has been the preferred way to do any sort of new work in the US government. The Iraq War took it to new levels, with paid contractors being deployed to do as much work as soldiers, marines, and airmen.
Re:Poetic justice? (Score:5, Informative)
I have a relative serving time in a commercially-run prison. Besides this being a totally repugnant concept to begin with, the way the prison corporation profits off the inmates and their families is unreal. For example, inmate phone calls to family are charged at $16 per half hour. Inmates must buy their personal supplies through a commissary run by the corporation at horribly inflated prices. Luxury items like TVs or guitars, and school supplies must be purchased through a special catalog, again at inflated prices.
You might say, "oh, they're criminals, they deserve to be soaked." But in reality it's the families who are being soaked, even though, in many cases, they are the victims of the inmate's crimes, or are suffering from lack of the inmate's income or parenting or whatever.
It's a completely immoral way to make a buck. The owners and executives of these prison corporations are no better than the inmates they are incarcerating.
Re:Poetic justice? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:What about the kids? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Recourse (Score:2, Informative)
Re:What about the kids? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:There is actually (Score:3, Informative)
So I would think if the case was worth trying or pressing charges, then the crime did happen.
Prosecutors can be full of shit [dallasnews.com] too. It was only recently that the Supreme Court ruled that if a prosecutor had evidence proving that the victim of their railroading was innocent, they had to turn it over to their defense. Not drop the case, just turn over the evidence.
This isn't just "juvi" (Score:5, Informative)
This sort of thing happens all the time. I did a technology contract for "Servo-lift Eastern" who is a big vendor for the prison system.
Privately run prisons are a big business in the U.S.A. Why do you think we imprison more of our population than any other western country? Because the good 'ol boys make money in jailing poor people who can't defend themselves.
Hey, I understand politics. I don't expect human beings to be pillars of integrity, everyone is corrupt on some level. However, if you are willing to knowingly cause material harm to another human being for money, you need to die.
Re:What about the kids? (Score:3, Informative)
You can't go after a judge for anything he does in court, except to impeach him. He could declare you guilty, pull out a gun, and shoot you mid-session and the only remedy would be impeachment. No criminal or civil penalties could apply. In this case, they can hit the judge for taking bribes, but there's no way to hit them for the over-sentencing.
While annoying in cases like this, this is actually an important feature of American jurisprudence. The only real way to guarentee judicial independence is to grant it to them unconditionally. If you leave a loophole to go after abuse, it will quickly be used to squelch unpopular decisions. Unfortunately, that means you occasionally have to live with the side effects.
Re:What about the kids? (Score:3, Informative)
Double-jeopardy doesn't apply to someone found guilty. Re-trying them would probably be the same as if they filed an appeal, which happens all the time. Even for those who actually were guilty of something, the sentence will likely be found to far outweigh what's appropriate for the crime.
Also, I believe that a judge is immune to prosecution for actions undertaken as a judge. However, courts may rule that accepting bribes to damage children for his own profit may be outside the scope of this duties, thus opening him to civil liability.
Of course, IANAL, so this is just a (semi-educated) guess, not a legal opinion.
Re:Poetic justice? (Score:5, Informative)
I'd rather have them put down because they're expensive to keep and likely to perform similar crimes in the future.
You should read some statistics. Turns out, between the appeals processes necessary to hopefully ensure you don't accidentally murder an innocent person, and the costs involved in actually killing them, it ends up costing *more* to execute someone than it does to just imprison them for life. And, as an added bonus, there's no take-backsies if it turns out you fucked up somewhere along the line.
Re:This isn't just "juvi" (Score:3, Informative)
Privately run prisons are a big business in the U.S.A. Why do you think we imprison more of our population than any other western country? Because the good 'ol boys make money in jailing poor people who can't defend themselves.
Prison Labor [google.com] is big business
As one of the snippets from Google's results says: ..."
"Prison labor is every US Corporation's dream: cheap labor, no sick leave, no time off, no holidays and employees that can be easily replaced
"Made In The USA" isn't always what its cracked up to be.
Re:Poetic justice? (Score:4, Informative)
Canada ***NEVER*** was a penal colony. And especially not during the french regime: every colonist had to show a certificate of morality signed by the priest and the lord in order to be allowed on the ship.
Re:Only 87 months? (Score:2, Informative)
It says that Powell, a lawyer, was one of the co-owners of the detention facility? And he's claiming that "as a lawyer [he] was also particularly vulnerable to the pressures that these Judges could bring to bear on him and his clients"? As a lawyer, he's an officer of the court, he shouldn't have any business being that and simultaneously owning any part of a prison. It's a fairly obvious conflict of interest. I'm sure that, of course, he would have argued, and many would have agreed, that there wasn't a conflict of interest. But, now that he's obviously made some sort of deal to save his skin, all of a sudden he was "particularly vulnerable" in his position. i.e., a massive conflict of interest existed. Gee, what a shock.
Re:3 months for satire? (Score:5, Informative)
You can't really "satire" your high school principle; they're unlikely to meet the "public figure" criteria that would protect the person who is making fun of them from legal repercussions if anything strayed over the line.
Of course the principal is a public figure - especially in the "world" of the high school students who were the intended audience of the satire.
Re:3 months for satire? (Score:1, Informative)
Amusingly, it's high profile, geek-enraging cases like this that probably got him caught.
Nope. Somebody involved turned everybody in.
Re:Poetic justice? (Score:1, Informative)
Personal exile isn't nearly as effective a punishment these days. In the middle ages, banishment was a handy tool for eliminating political rivals, preventing them from organizing against you or achieving martyrdom. It was also essentially a death sentence unless the individual in question had powerful allies abroad they could flee to: castle-town dwellers were rarely able to be self-sufficient and the majority of exiles were to remote or wilderness territories.
Now, banishment in the form of permanent disbarment is both reasonable and expected in this case. I shall be very disappointed if these individuals are ever again permitted to act as a judge in any district.
Re:3 months for satire? (Score:1, Informative)
Bullshit. That would fall under "vulgar abuse"; that's not equivalent to defamatory.