Despite Red Flags About Judges, Kickback Scheme Flourished - Old Friends Hatch A Plan

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Published on Friday, 27 March 2009

Written by Ian Urbina, NY Times

Old Friends Hatch A Plan

It all started in June 2000 with a simple business proposition, according to the judges' indictment and more than 40 interviews with courtroom workers, authorities and others.

Robert J. Powell, a wealthy personal-injury lawyer from Hazleton and longtime friend of Judge Conahan, wanted to know how he might get a contract to build a private detention center. Judge Ciavarella thought he could help.

The two men agreed to meet and, according to prosecutors, somewhere in that conversation a plan was hatched that courthouse workers and county officials would later describe as a "freight train without brakes."

First, Judge Ciavarella put Mr. Powell in touch with a developer who also happened to be an old friend, Robert K. Mericle, to start work on finding a site. Then, in January 2002 -- the month Judge Conahan became president judge, giving him control of the courthouse budget -- he signed a secret deal with Mr. Powell, agreeing that the court would pay $1.3 million in annual rent, on top of the tens of millions of dollars that the county and the state would pay to house the delinquent juveniles. And by the end of that year, Judge Conahan had gotten rid of the competition by eliminating financing for the county detention center.

"They were unstoppable," said Judge Chester B. Muroski, who sent a letter to county commissioners raising concerns about detention costs, only to be transferred days later to another court by Judge Conahan. "I knew something was wrong, but they silenced all dissent."

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