Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro says President Joe Biden got it ‘absolutely wrong’ commuting ‘kids-for-cash’ judge’s sentence

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro on Friday rebuked President Joe Biden’s decision to commute the remaining sentence of a former Luzerne County judge who had been sentenced to 17 ½ years in federal prison for sending children to jail while accepting millions of dollars in kickbacks.

Biden commuted the sentences of 1,500 people on Thursday, including that of Michael T. Conahan, a former Pennsylvania judge in Luzerne County who was convicted in 2011 for the central role he played in the so-called kids-for-cash scandal. He and his fellow judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. accepted nearly $3 million in payments to send minors to for-profit jails instead of the county-owned juvenile detention center in the major scandal that ruined children and families’ lives.

Conahan, 72, had been serving his sentence at a Florida facility until he was released to home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. He still had at least two years remaining on his sentence that was wiped out as part of Biden’s action on Thursday. The White House said all of the people whose sentences were commuted had been in home confinement for at least a year, and that the commutations represented the most people granted clemency in modern history.

» READ MORE: The Pennsylvania ‘kids-for-cash’ judicial scandal, explained

Shapiro, a Democrat, said at an unrelated news conference in Scranton — Conahan and Biden’s hometown — on Friday that the “kids-for-cash” scandal remains a “black eye on the community” that irreparably harmed children and their families, and Conahan’s sentence was “too light” to begin with.

“The fact that he’s been allowed out over the last years because of COVID, was on house arrest, and now has been granted clemency, I think, is absolutely wrong,” Shapiro said. “He should have been in prison for at least the 17 years that he was sentenced to by a jury of his peers.

“He deserves to be behind bars, not walking as a free man,” Shapiro added.

Even the Biden administration did not research the specifics of the case besides that it fit a specific set of parameters, Politico reported late Friday.

Shapiro, the state’s former attorney general who has signed only half of the clemency recommendations sent to him by the Board of Pardons, said he studies “every single case that comes across my desk” and takes the governor’s power to commute sentences very seriously. Shapiro is also said to have ambitions for higher office, and is a front-runner for the 2028 presidential election.

Other Pennsylvania public officials criticized Biden for releasing Conahan, including State Sen. Lisa Baker (R., Luzerne), who chairs the state Senate Judiciary Committee. She called the commutation “incomprehensible and indefensible” in a statement on Friday.

“Where does ruining the lives of vulnerable kids in order to enrich oneself warrant a presidential commutation?“ Baker said. “It is truly disheartening to see a national leader on criminal justice issues for decades so wantonly undermine the rule of equal justice in his waning days.”

Prior to the many commutations granted on Thursday, Biden faced mounting pressure from criminal justice advocates and progressive groups to issue more pardons and commutations before the end of his term, especially after he pardoned his son Hunter earlier this month.