Pa. chief justice urges action against McCaffery

Pennsylvania Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille urged his colleagues Friday to take action against Justice Seamus P. McCaffery, reacting to newly disclosed sexually explicit e-mails McCaffery sent this year to the government account of his brother, a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge.

In an interview, Castille, who viewed the messages obtained by The Inquirer, said their graphic contents "undermine our moral authority" and the respect the citizenry has for the court system.

"It's a cloud over all of the courts," Castille said after seeing the e-mails. "The high court now needs to ponder possible action."

His comments, which are certain to stoke a simmering feud between the two justices, came the same day that state Attorney General Kathleen G. Kane's office met with Castille to share hundreds of other graphic e-mails either sent or received by judges or other court personnel and uncovered during a review of e-mails in her office.

In that meeting, the chief justice was shown about 1,500 graphic images and 65 explicit video clips sent over state servers between 2008 and 2012, said James Koval, spokesman for the Administrative Office of Pennsylvania Courts. He would not name the jurists or court employees involved.

The Inquirer has reported that some of those e-mails were sent from McCaffery's personal account to an agent in the Attorney General's Office.

McCaffery has not commented on the e-mails. His lawyer, Dion G. Rassias, did not return phone calls Friday, but said in a statement last week: "I just wonder why a half-dozen private e-mails, allegedly from Justice McCaffery's personal computer, are front-page news."

Kane has named eight men, all former top lawyers and investigators in the Attorney General's Office, as having sent or received hundreds of sexually explicit e-mails between 2008 and 2012. She has not confirmed whether McCaffery, who never worked in that office, sent or received any of the graphic material.

The more recent e-mail exchanges obtained Friday by The Inquirer were not part of the attorney general's review.

One contains 10 photos of nude women sunbathing on a beach. The other contrasts five photos of a topless young woman with six images of a naked elderly woman, dressed only in a headscarf and sunglasses, with a joke about sun damage.

Both came from the same Comcast account apparently used in the earlier correspondence unearthed by Kane's office.

"It's the most disgusting piece of obscenity I have ever seen in my life," Castille said in reference to the latter e-mail chain.

The 2014 e-mails were sent to the government address of McCaffery's younger brother, Daniel, on Jan. 9 and 10 - the same week Daniel McCaffery was sworn in as a Common Pleas Court judge in Philadelphia.

The younger McCaffery responded to the first message with a single line: "send this to my yahoo account-not work." The second came the next day.

Asked about the e-mails Friday, Daniel McCaffery said that he had no recollection of receiving them and that he planned to call upon state court administrators, the attorney general, and federal prosecutors to investigate how and why his judicial e-mail account was "hacked."

"It is my belief we have now reached a point of judicial McCarthyism," he said. "I will not rest until the person responsible is identified, fired, and, if possible, prosecuted."

Castille has said that any judge who exchanged grossly pornographic material by e-mail might have violated the state's code of judicial ethics and may be subject to discipline. The fact that the graphic material may have been sent from a personal account made no difference, he said Friday.

"He's sending it to his brother in his official capacity," the chief justice said. "Once you put it into the [government] system, it's public."

He pointed to the guidelines in the state Code of Judicial Conduct that prohibit judges, even outside their official judicial actions, "from doing things that raise questions about their 'integrity.' " As an example, the code cites jokes that "demean individuals" based on factors such as gender.

The Supreme Court members can suspend judges, even their own colleagues, for violations, or they can opt to refer infractions to Pennsylvania's Judicial Conduct Board.

The board has already opened an investigation into McCaffery's e-mail traffic based on a complaint from a Harrisburg activist.

Castille has raised objections about McCaffery's use of e-mail before.

In late 2012, he sent a letter rebuking the justice, and copied it to their five other colleagues, after McCaffery quoted Ernest Hemingway in the signature line on his court e-mails. The quote read, in part: "There is no hunting like the hunting of a man."

In his letter, Castille, who lost his right leg in Vietnam as a Marine, told McCaffery he found the use of the quote offensive.

"I have to remind you that the court's computer system is for official business," Castille wrote. "You may not appreciate the potential consequences of forwarding items through the court's computer system and the possible embarrassment that it may cause you and the court if some of your e-mails are made public."

Relations between Castille and McCaffery, both Philadelphians, have been tense ever since the latter justice joined the high court in 2008.

By some accounts, McCaffery, a Democrat, became upset when Castille, a Republican, did not name him the liaison to the Philadelphia courts that year. Since then, their enmity has only grown.

Castille commissioned a 2012 report that suggested in part that McCaffery had fixed a traffic ticket given to his wife. McCaffery denied the allegation.

Castille has also sharply criticized McCaffery in connection with referral fees from law firms paid to his wife, who is also his top judicial aide. McCaffery is suing The Inquirer over articles that explored those fees. That lawsuit is pending.

Asked Friday whether his latest criticism of McCaffery stemmed from their falling out, Castille said he would respond the same with any judge.

"Unfortunately," he said, "Justice McCaffery's name keeps popping up."