When a child came before Ciavarella, the judge usually had in front of him a folder containing not only the detailed recommendations of the Probation Department, but information on the juvenile’s school record, parents, siblings, and other personal information, including any problems with drugs or alcohol. This information usually came from a so-called “intake report” based on an initial interview conducted by a juvenile probation officer early in the case. Typically, the file was given to Ciavarella by Brulo, even though it was against the law and a violation of court procedure for Ciavarella to have it, because information from the file could prejudice his final ruling. A juvenile judge is expected to hear a case with a clean slate and decide on the basis of the facts of the case whether the child committed the offense he or she is accused of. But by the time a child came before Ciavarella, the judge had already read his or her file and made up his mind about what to do. That’s one reason most of the hearings were so brief.
Public defenders witnessed hundreds of instances of children’s constitutional rights being violated, but they failed to speak up either on behalf of their clients or under their ethical responsibilities as lawyers. They failed to contact the state Judicial Conduct Board, they failed to contact the Luzerne County Bar Association and, with one exception, they failed to contact Russin, the chief public defender, who was in charge of twenty-two assistant public defenders—six full-time and sixteen part-time. Russin was the county’s chief public defender for the entire time Ciavarella was the juvenile judge. In fact, Russin had held that post since 1980 and had served as an assistant public defender for four years before that. He worked at his public job about twenty hours a week, reserving the rest of his time for his private practice. As a part-time official, Russin did no in-the-courtroom supervision of his assistants, even though he knew they were inexperienced. There were no performance reviews or training in juvenile procedures.
During the Ciavarella years (1996–2008), Russin assigned only one of his twenty-two defenders to juvenile court, and that was on a part-time basis averaging four hours a week. As a result, public defenders handled extraordinarily few juvenile cases in Luzerne County. Russin estimated this number to be somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of all cases in which the offender had an attorney, meaning that between 2003 and 2008 no more than 250 juveniles had representation from Russin’s office. Russin claimed he did not know the extent of Ciavarella’s denial of legal representation to children, but said that the low number of defenders assigned to juveniles was due to his meager budget. Pennsylvania is one of only two states that do not provide funds for public defenders to represent juveniles. The entire burden falls on the counties, and therefore there are significant differences within the state in the quality of legal representation for child offenders. This disparity is sometimes known pejoratively as “justice by geography.”
Russin felt so constrained by a lack of funds that even when one of his assistants came to him with a serious complaint, he did not address it. Jonathan Ursiak told Russin that huge numbers of juveniles were going before Ciavarella without lawyers, often after signing improper waivers. But rather than look into the possibility of constitutional violations, he told his young subordinate, “First of all, we’re not going to seek clients. I’m not going to put up a sign and say, ‘Please come in here, and we’ll represent you.’ We have to assume there’s a proper waiver going on. We have to assume the judge has a waiver. We have to assume the district attorney knows the rules and the waiver and the juvenile probation office is doing the waiver. And we don’t have the time or the manpower to intervene.”
But, of course, all those assumptions were wrong.
One of the most egregious abuses Ursiak brought to Russin was Ciavarella’s practice of placing children in PA Child Care to await evaluation by Dr. Vita, the court-appointed psychiatrist who was married to Conahan’s sister. Matthew, the thirteen-year-old accused of tossing a piece of steak at his mother’s boyfriend, was detained for sixteen days before getting to see Dr. Vita. Edward, the wrestler who eventually committed suicide, languished at the Pittston center for a month before getting his evaluation. Russin was troubled by the injustice of depriving children of their liberty in order to be evaluated under a court order, but he did not protest because he said he respected Ciavarella’s judgment. Moreover, Russin was well aware that Ciavarella’s zero-tolerance philosophy had strong support from the probation officers, who were taking their cues from the judge; the assistant district attorneys, who were getting convictions; and the police, who knew that when they charged a kid it would stick and youths would be sent away. But Ciavarella’s adherents went well beyond the courtroom—and nowhere was zero tolerance embraced more warmly than in Luzerne County’s eleven public school districts, where 50,000 children showed up for class every day.
By almost any standard, the public schools of Luzerne County were remarkably corrupt. Dr. Thomas Baldino, the Wilkes University political science professor and longtime critic of local public education, likens some districts to “job-selling cesspools:” He adds: “For most respectable school boards, the biggest political issue is taxes, but in northeastern Pennsylvania, it’s jobs. If you want a job teaching, you have to know somebody or pay somebody.” Undeniably, the fourth R in Luzerne County schools was Relatives. Nepotism has been a way of life in northeastern Pennsylvania for so long that it is accepted and expected. School districts are loaded with the families and friends of school directors and top administrators. Not only do school directors see virtue in “hiring locally,” the argument has even been advanced that it is a way to counter “brain drain,” the migration of talented young people away from home. In 2009, Jeffrey T. Namey, superintendent of the Wilkes-Barre Area School District, claimed that a school board member’s wife, a principal’s son, and a teacher’s son were all the best possible selections for elementary teaching positions among all the applicants. In 2002 a Wilkes-Barre Area school director had her son, daughter-in-law, and four cousins on the payroll earning a combined $270,000 in salary and benefits. The director defended her actions by saying everyone was doing it: “I have nothing against anybody else, as long as they’re qualified. Every board member is pushing somebody for a job—friends’ kids, neighbors’ kids. I have helped many, many teachers in the district get jobs.” Just before the 2002 election, the Times-Leader did a survey and found that fully one-third of the incumbent school directors who were seeking re-election in Luzerne County had relatives working in the school districts they oversaw.
By 2005, school officials were well aware that the one certain way to rid themselves of a troublemaker was to call the police, because this would get the child before Ciavarella. These kids were not only disciplinary headaches, they often were low achievers academically and dragged down test scores, making it doubly desirable to get rid of them. Behaviors that once were matters for in-school discipline—shoving matches, foul language, disrespect to teachers—were elevated to law enforcement issues. They were no longer handled by a visit to the principal’s office or an after-school detention. In short, Luzerne County educators used Ciavarella as their chief disciplinarian. This despite the fact that under Pennsylvania law the only offense schools were required to report to police was the discovery of firearms and other prohibited weapons on school grounds. Around administrative offices and teachers’ lounges, Ciavarella was praised to the point of eulogy. “The schools just loved him,” said former Judge Chester B. Muroski, who served as juvenile judge in Luzerne County from 1982 to 1996. “It was so easy for them. When a kid got sent to the principal’s office, even for something relatively minor, just call the cops.” Muroski was removed as juvenile judge in 1996 partly because of complaints from school officials that he was too lenient in sentencing young people. Under Ciavarella, they pressed for disruptive students to be “placed”—and therefore out of their hair.
In feeding their problems to Ciavarella, Luzerne County educators ignored alternative steps that would be fairer to the children a
nd less expensive to society. These include community service, after-school detention, loss of privileges such as extracurricular activities, and in-school suspensions that allow students to receive extra academic help.
Every autumn, early in the school year, principals, teachers’ organizations, and parents’ groups invited Ciavarella to speak at high schools, middle schools, and elementary schools. One parent remembers an elementary school principal introducing the judge to some 250 pupils this way: “And if all of that didn’t scare you enough, here’s Judge Ciavarella.” Parents bathed him in a warm blanket of applause. Punctuating his sentences with his eyes and brows, he promised institutional placement for any school-related rules infractions or behavioral lapses. “I’m your friend,” he said, “but there’s one thing you must remember. If you don’t behave, you’re going to end up in my courtroom. You don’t want that to happen.” Then he mixed in with his audience, patting children on the head. Parents thanked him for taking time out from his busy schedule. The judge received similarly warm receptions all over the county, though in high schools there would be a scattering of catcalls and boos from students sitting in darkened auditoriums. “Ciavarella played on fear,” Baldino said. “Parents were afraid their kids would be bullied in school. Old people were afraid they would be attacked by violent juveniles.”
“Ciavarella took something good to a whole new level that was wrong,” said James A. Gibbons, a district magistrate judge in nearby Scranton. “I go into schools and give talks, but mine are thematic and educational. I’ll go in and talk about how the courts work and why to be wary of Internet predators. This guy went overboard and was threatening kids.”
In 2005 Ciavarella went to faculty meetings and warned the teachers of the growing danger of gang members disrupting classes. “There are problems down there that don’t get resolved,” he said after meeting with the Hazleton Area School District faculty. “There is an element now beginning to participate in gangs. People don’t want to say gangs are there and want to have a ‘kids-will-be-kids’ attitude. You can’t do that and maintain a safe environment for our kids to go to school.” To be sure, there was gang activity in northeastern Pennsylvania, partly because of easy access to drugs from New York City. In addition, two major national drug trafficking routes—Interstates 80 and 81—intersected in Luzerne County.
But no sinister gang inspired fifteen-year-old Paige to throw her sandal at her mother during an argument in the summer of 2005. Her mother filed charges to teach her a lesson. At a brief hearing, Ciavarella told the young girl, “Kiss your parents goodbye.” Then he sent her to PA Child Care for six months. It was a difficult experience for her. She yearned to be home, and she didn’t understand why she was interned with burglars, drug traffickers, and prostitutes. Nor was thirteen-year-old Sheree a threat to public safety when she took a joyride on a bicycle her mother said had been abandoned on the street. Ciavarella sent her away for a month, and thus began a long series of out-of-home confinements in several areas of Pennsylvania. The child became lonely, unstable, and began cutting herself. Fifteen-year-old Alyson was not a gang member when she got in a dispute over a candy bar with her mother and, at the height of the argument, hit her three times on the backside with a pillow. To teach her a lesson, her mother called the police, and suddenly she was before Ciavarella on assault charges. When the judge asked her how she was pleading, she said guilty. She got fifty-six days at Wind Gap, the wilderness camp in Carbon County operated by the Youth Services Agency.
The familiar scenario of parents bringing their children before Ciavarella to “teach them a lesson” has a long history. The very first juvenile courts of more than a century ago were used by working-class Americans to discipline their own unruly children. Sometimes parents were annoyed that their children refused to take factory jobs. “Working-class and immigrant parents used the courts as a club over rebellious children,” writes Lawrence M. Friedman in his 1993 book Crime and Punishment in American History. “It was a weapon in a culture clash—a clash of generations, especially between old world parents, at sea in America, confused about values, horrified at the mobility, the laxity, the narcissism, the ‘fatal liberty’ that swallowed up their children and destroyed a nexus between parent and child that they had thought to be as sacred as a worshiped sun.”
Fourteen-year-old Jamie came before Ciavarella on assault charges. She had gotten into a fight with another girl. They slapped each other once in a dispute over a boy at a bowling alley. Police and probation officers told her she did not need a lawyer. Ciavarella adjudicated her delinquent and sent her first to PA Child Care. She also spent time in two other detention facilities for a total time away from home of eleven months. During her confinement, other girls taught her about self-mutilation. She still bears the scars. Four years later, she told an interviewer, “It affected me dramatically. I’ve lost friends over this. People looked at me different when I came out, thought I was a bad person, because I was gone for so long. I’m still struggling in school, because the schooling system in facilities like these places is just horrible. Everybody gets put in the same level, and it’s just horrible. I’m still struggling. I’m graduating this year. I was like an A-B student before I went, and now I’m just struggling with Bs and Cs.”
Meanwhile, Conahan was a glowering, unsmiling presence in the century-old courthouse and dominated the courthouse staff by populating it with his political cronies and relatives. Even to Ciavarella, Conahan was the Boss. The courthouse teemed with ambition for raises and promotion, and fear of demotion and firing. When it came to questioning the violation of children’s rights and the loss of their freedom, the courthouse became a hotbed of cold feet. Conahan and Ciavarella packed the courthouse with their friends and relatives. Dr. Vita, the court-appointed psychologist and Conahan’s brother-in-law, was far from the only one of the judge’s relatives to benefit. Indeed, it was joked that one probation office contained so many Conahan kin that “you didn’t have to go far for a kidney if you needed a transplant.” Conahan’s cousin was the court administrator and another brother-in-law was jury management supervisor. Conahan’s sister and nephew had jobs. Ciavarella’s daughter was an assistant district attorney. Also holding county jobs were a former Ciavarella neighbor, Ciavarella’s daughter’s boyfriend and former boyfriend, Ciavarella’s wife’s nephew, his wife’s nephew’s wife, the daughter of Ciavarella family friends, and Ciavarella’s cousin.
The judges’ intimidation powers extended well beyond the courthouse. In the American political system, there are few figures more powerful than judges, who are empowered to rule on the most basic aspects of everyday life and deprive any citizen of freedom and property. William Kashatus, the local historian, said this influence was magnified in Luzerne County: “The longtime residents are products of a regional culture that emphasizes deference to public officials and retribution for those who challenge authority. Much of the area’s population is descended from poorly educated immigrants from eastern and southern Europe who worked in a once-prosperous anthracite coal industry. Congressmen, state representatives, and judges were among the most important authority figures in the lives of those immigrants, wielding significant influence and helping them navigate the challenges and uncertainties of their new home. At the same time, the immigrants feared retribution if they challenged authority of any kind, whether legal or illegal. Aspects of this mentality still prevail in Luzerne County. Ciavarella and Conahan realized that and preyed on it.”
According to Robert Wolensky, the Wisconsin sociologist who grew up in Luzerne County: “There’s always been a mentality here that if you don’t do as you’re told, you’re going to lose your livelihood. But if you do as you’re told, and don’t make trouble, you’ll be taken care of and you’ll have a job. The pillars of this pattern were the coal companies, the aristocratic families, the church, and organized crime. Now it’s the elected officials. Who’s more powerful than a judge in his courtroom?”
Former Judge Muroski, who
handled juvenile matters in Luzerne County for twenty-three years, believes there is a strong “anti-kid” current that lent Ciavarella’s stern policies popular support. Luzerne County has one of the oldest populations in the nation—about 18.1 percent of its people are over sixty-five, which is higher than even the state of Florida at 17.2 percent. “The city of Wilkes-Barre owns two golf courses, but there is no municipal swimming pool,” says Muroski. “I rest my case.” The judge remembers that when he was growing up in the 1940s and 1950s, there was a notorious juvenile facility called Kis-Lyn: “The kids were treated unbelievably brutally. They were beaten with razor straps. Parents, teachers, and principals told kids, ‘If you screw up, you’ll go to Kis-Lyn.’ It was the worst thing that could happen to you. A teacher threatened me with it once. It scared the crap out of me.” Kis-Lyn was closed in 1965 and the site is now a federal job training center. “Ciavarella became the new Kis-Lyn,” Muroski said. “Parents and teachers tried to scare kids by threatening to send them to Ciavarella.” Indeed, right after he became juvenile judge in 1997, Ciavarella tried to persuade the county to reopen Kis-Lyn for first-time offenders, whom he said would benefit from a boot camp atmosphere that featured strenuous physical activity, schooling, and counseling. “It would be a place where we could reinforce the fact that they don’t ever want to break the law again,” he said. The plan was dropped because the county did not provide funding. Anthony T. P. Brooks, executive director of the Luzerne County Historical Society, said the relative inattention to the welfare of children goes back to the mining days when preadolescent boys and girls were employed as breakers, sorting chunks of coal as they rolled down chutes, or as “spraggers,” jabbing long pieces of wood under the wheels of mine cars to slow them down.
For many of the kids who were run through Luzerne County Juvenile Court and sent away, the worst part of the experience happened immediately—the shackling of their hands and feet. Many of them report feeling degraded and humiliated by the restraints. At the beginning of the day, a dozen or more sets of shackles would be brought in by court bailiffs. If the youths were placed by Ciavarella, sometimes they would be shackled by probation officers and escorted from the courtroom. On other occasions, they would be taken to a separate room to have the restraints attached. Several individuals recalled days when there were a dozen or more children standing in the courtroom shackled and wearing orange prison jumpsuits.
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