'Cash for kids' judge Ciavarella sees verdict as vindication

Disgraced former Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. exited the federal courthouse in Scranton as he had entered it - still swearing that he hadn't taken cash for kids.

To hear Ciavarella and his lawyers tell it, the jury's verdict Friday was almost a victory.

If so, it is a victory that Ciavarella will likely celebrate for years in a federal prison cell.

After a relatively quick trial, the jury convicted Ciavarella on 12 of 39 counts in a case in which prosecutors charged that he and another corrupt judge had pocketed almost $3 million while overseeing juvenile justice in Luzerne County.

The jury found Ciavarella guilty of racketeering, conspiracy to launder money, honest-services mail fraud, and filing false tax returns.

What gave Ciavarella his reason to crow was that the panel had acquitted him of bribery and extortion charges. As he left the courtroom, Ciavarella said the verdict was something of a vindication.

He "never took a dime to send a kid anywhere," and the jury agreed, Ciavarella asserted.

Laurene Transue, whose 15-year-old daughter, Hillary, was jailed by Ciavarella in 2007 for mocking an assistant principal on her MySpace page, said she found the mixed verdict confusing.

What upset Transue more, though, was that U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik released Ciavarella to await sentencing.

"That was very, very difficult for me," she said, "because at Hillary's trial and that of thousands of other kids, the trial lasted an average of 60 seconds, and they were handcuffed right there and taken out of the courtroom."

Still, under advisory sentencing guidelines, Ciavarella is looking at a minimum sentence of 13 years, which he could start serving at age 61.

As veteran former prosecutor L. George Parry noted, "At age 61, any sentence can turn out to be a life sentence."

Parry added: "The defense may want to dress it up how they want, but it's a resounding victory of prosecutors."

That said, defense lawyers Al Flora Jr. and William Ruzzo made the best out of a very weak hand.

Long before opening statements Feb. 8, their client had admitted - under oath in another legal case - that the feds had him cold on a number of key issues.

Ciavarella, who spent a decade presiding over Luzerne County's Juvenile Court, acknowledged in 2009 that he had accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the builder of a new juvenile-detention center.

He also admitted that he had hidden the money - failing to list it on the financial-disclosure forms that all judges must make public annually.

The difficult pitch that the lawyers had to make to the jury was that their client had kept the payments secret not because they were illegal, but merely because he thought they would upset voters.

In the end, the jury of a dozen men and women split the difference.

They found Ciavarella guilty of "honest-services mail fraud" for filing, via the U.S. mail, four consecutive financial-disclosure reports that omitted payments from the builder and owner of the detention center.

They also found him guilty of filing false tax returns for those four years - a crime to which Ciavarella had immediately confessed under cross-examination.

They also found him guilty of racketeering and money-laundering conspiracy for sharing in a $997,600 payment by the center's builder. This money went to Ciavarella and the other corrupt judge, Michael T. Conahan, 58, who pleaded guilty in the case last year.

In finding him guilty for taking the money, the jury rejected Ciavarella's assertion that the payment was a lawful "finder's fee" rewarding him for putting the facility's builder in touch with its owner.

The jury acquitted Ciavarella in connection with about $1.9 million in additional payments made to him or Conahan.

Prosecutors said those payments were bribes paid by the builder, Rob Mericle, and the facility's owner, wealthy personal-injury lawyer Robert Powell.

The defense vigorously challenged the suggestion that these payments were bribes. On the stand, Ciavarella insisted that Mericle, far from being the target of a shakedown, had come up with the idea of making the payments.

"I never went to him," Ciavarella testified. "I never asked about a finder's fee, never knew about a finder's fee. He came to me."

Flora and Ruzzo also did their best to demonize Powell, portraying him as far too powerful a political operative to be an extortion victim. Among other allegations, they suggested that Powell was an embezzler and a cheat in his marriage.

Moreover, if Powell was a victim of a shakedown, they asked jurors, why had he routinely socialized with both judges, downing Friday night martinis at Conahan's luxury home and summertime beers around Ciavarella's swimming pool?

In one of the most lurid parts of the trial, prosecutors presented convincing evidence that Powell had tapped into his law firm's bank account to withdraw $143,500 in cash that he stuffed into FedEx boxes and delivered to Conahan.

To corroborate Powell's testimony, prosecutors put on the stand his firm's bookkeeper and the law-firm partner who delivered the FedEx boxes. (Conahan was never called as a witness.)

But Ciavarella's defense team argued successfully that he had taken no cash and had not known about it.

In his closing arguments, Flora called Conahan and Powell conspirators inside a conspiracy. Powell, Flora said, was "Conahan's secret partner, unbeknownst to Ciavarella."

In the end, the jurors bought some of it, but not all.

As Ruzzo said afterward, "Well, they didn't believe Bobby Powell."

But the panel nonetheless found their client to be a racketeer, a money launderer, and a tax cheat.

Marsha Levick, chief counsel for the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, which has been a vigorous advocate for the thousands of youngsters jailed by Ciavarella, said the verdict was a devastating defeat for the defense.

"Let's get real," she said. "They're just trying to put spin on this. He was convicted of racketeering."

U.S. Attorney Peter Smith, the top federal prosecutor in the region, had an even more sardonic view.

"I find it interesting that a man just convicted of racketeering would consider this a victory," Smith said. "I'd like to know what he'd consider a defeat."