Justice Wasn’t Completely Blind for Hillary Transue
This is actually heartbreaking to me. 5000 kids had to suffer so these assholes could make $2.6 million. I hope they get the fucking book thrown at them. They are a disgrace and they deserve to be anally raped repeatedly while in prison. Fuck them.
At worst, Hillary Transue thought she might get a stern lecture when she appeared before a judge for building a spoof MySpace page mocking the assistant principal at her high school in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. She was a stellar student who had never been in trouble, and the page stated clearly at the bottom that it was just a joke.
Instead, the judge sentenced her to three months at a juvenile detention center on a charge of harassment.
She was handcuffed and taken away as her stunned parents stood by.
The answers became a bit clearer on Thursday as the judge, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., and a colleague, Michael T. Conahan, appeared in federal court in Scranton, Pa., to plead guilty to wire fraud and income tax fraud for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers run by PA Child Care and a sister company, Western PA Child Care.
“In my entire career, I’ve never heard of anything remotely approaching this,” said Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim, who was appointed by the State Supreme Court this week to determine what should be done with the estimated 5,000 juveniles who have been sentenced by Judge Ciavarella since the scheme started in 2003. Many of them were first-time offenders and some remain in detention.
If the court agrees to the plea agreement, both judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and resign from the bench and bar. They are expected to be sentenced in the next several months. Lawyers for both men declined to comment.
Since state law forbids retirement benefits to judges convicted of a felony while in office, the judges would also lose their pensions.
Judges Plead Guilty in Scheme to Jail Youths for Profit – NYTimes.com
Disgusting.
February 19th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
The most interesting sentence in that story was this:
“There was a culture of intimidation surrounding this judge and no one was willing to speak up about the sentences he was handing down.”
Corruption and bullying doesn’t happen in a vacuum. They got away with this for so long by systematically scaring everybody who could have questioned them.
The only way decent people will ever be able to fight back is psychologically. Refuse to be scared. Encourage and love-bomb people whenever you can. Tell them they are brave and then help them be heroes.
February 19th, 2009 at 6:09 pm
First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to comment on this post. I really appreciate it.
Second, people are scared and frankly having been in the “System”, there is nothing that makes it easy to question that system. The judges, lawyers and police are all on the same side. They wash each others hands and scratch each others backs. We are the intruders into their world.
Yes, be brave and stand up for what your believe in and what is right. It makes me think of the Terry Childs case in California right now. He’s not backing down because he thinks he’s right and he refuses to let the system intimidate him.
Again, thanks for commenting!
February 19th, 2009 at 7:09 pm
It might not be all bad news for these two wayward “jurists”
Prison might offer some exiting new career opportunities.
When Big Bubba gets done with them, Their anal cavities will be so big that they will be able to rent out that space in order for someone to build a private prison.
February 19th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I’m happy that they will be disbarred.
Thank you for replying!
February 27th, 2009 at 7:42 pm
Putting childern in jail on there first trail thay ought to have there life tooken away
March 7th, 2009 at 3:55 am
These men are vile criminals who have damaged and destroyed lives and they deserve to be punished to the full extent of the law.
However, anal rape? Are you sure about that? Are you okay with women being raped in prison? I don’t think that’s included in any criminal or moral code I’m aware of.
March 7th, 2009 at 4:36 am
First off, thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my posting.
“Anal rape” is my clever way of saying what you more eloquently said.
March 15th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
WOW. I’d heard briefly of this case before but hadn’t really gotten the full scope of the scam. Shameful. The two convicted judges didn’t get nearly as much time as they deserved.
ALSO: the jailhouse rape-as-karmic-revenge fantasy is SUCH a cliche at this point. And note that the name “Bubba,” presumably a large black (ooh, scary and undesirable!), is ALWAYS used in this meme. Try Googling “jail + bubba” and see. I hope these judges rot but please be more original in revenge fantasies, please!
January 9th, 2010 at 7:06 am
Those two judges are traitors to the Constitution of the highest order. They have spat in the face of justice, and ruined the lives of countless children. The emotional damage done to a child after being wrongfully imprisoned for half a year is unimaginable. As far as I’m concerned, what those judges did is morally equivalent to serially raping several thousand children. They don’t even get the claim of having perverse compulsions, like pedophiles. They did it out of plain greed.
Getting anally raped in prison is too merciful a punishment for these cretins, and they won’t even get that. No doubt they’ll spend a couple years in a luxury spa and resort… I mean, minimum security prison. The only acceptable punishment for these crimes is death. A swift execution to serve as a warning to all others. Preferably being skinned alive.
They have tarnished the most sacred ideals of this country for money. These beasts have no right to breathe the same air as those children.
May you rot in hell, Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conaha
February 24th, 2010 at 10:14 am
[...] now writes weekly essays on the state of the economy and the tyrannical “justice system” of the United States. His essays are well worth [...]
February 23rd, 2011 at 4:32 pm
[...] received extremely harsh sentences from these two judges for very minor offenses: in one case, a 15-year old girl received a 3-month sentence for clowning her principal on Myspace! This story has been major news here in northeastern Pennsylvania since the time we moved here a few [...]