Pennsylvania Judicial elections

As usual the elections for the PA Superior and Commonwealth courts are flying under the radar along with the retention question for 6 members of the 3 state appellate courts. It's one of those things that I've seen a tidbit about here and there that didn't register until I took a look at the Luzerne County sample ballot tonight, thanks Lenny. PMC has a rundown of all the candidates.

One seat is up for the Superior Court and the candidates are Republican Vic Stabile and Democrat David Wecht. Commonwealth Court nominees are Ann Covey (R) and Kathryn Boockvar (D) competing for the open spot.


I don't pay much attention to the statewide Judge races because the candidates run on their bio's and promise to be tough on crime with an emphasis on locking up all the drug dealers. But then every politician promises to lock up all the druggies and we all know that policy has worked out well over the past 40 years. More drugs, more crime and a record number of people in prison. Drug addiction should not be treated as a law enforcement issue but a public health problem but that will require a change in federal law. Their campaigns are financed by the lawyers that will appear before them but they assure us that that will not influence their rulings. What a bunch of hooey.



Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts make a good case for scrapping the present system and going with merit selection of Judges. Their blog JudgesOnMerit.org documents the problems with electing appellate Judges and suggests improvements to the process.

In the 2009 contest for PA Supreme Court Justice we elected Joan Orie Melvin who is now in a lot of hot water along with her sister.

I'm willing to go further and go with merit selection for county judges. Do you think Michael Conahan could have survived a background check?

Vote no on retention.

I have never voted to retain a Judge as I think that elections for the offices are pointless in the first place. Very few people have lost the question but in recent years Russell Nigro and
Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. have been tossed by the voters.


This coming November we will be asked to decide if 6 people should continue in their positions.
There is not a big controversy this time such as the midnight pay raise or the kids for cash scandal so they will probably be retained.


•Justice J. Michael Eakin, Supreme Court of Pennsylvania –
•Judge John T. Bender, Superior Court of Pennsylvania -
•Judge Mary Jane Bowes, Superior Court of Pennsylvania
•Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania –
•Judge Mary Hannah Leavitt, Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania –
•Judge Robert E. Simpson Jr., Commonwealth Court of Pennsylvania –

They have all been recomended by the PA Bar Association.

I'm still voting NO.

The judges

We have 2 new members of the Court of Common Pleas in Luzerne County. Bill Amesbury won both party nominations in May and Tina Gartley came in second on the Democratic side virtually ensuring their election in the fall. Yet another reason to get rid of cross filing in judicial and school board races in the primary when the fewest people vote. That is not a shot at Gartley or Amesbury as I think they are good people. It is a shot at the Wilkes-Barre Area School Directors who recently selected an accused criminal as Board President but that is another subject.


I will give props to our esteemed jurists for selecting the only Republican on the bench, Tom Burke, as the new President Judge. Burke just won his retention vote despite my urging of a no vote on him and PPO-2 on principle. My lawyer friends tell me he is one of the best people on the bench and will hopefully continue the efforts of Chet Muroski to clean up the mess. I still find it hard to believe that these guys didn't know what was going on in Ciavarella's courtroom. Muroski says he went to FBI about the shenanigans going on in the courthouse but Ann Lokuta was the only one to put it in writing. For her efforts Michael Conahan orchestrated a campaign to remove her from the bench that the Court of Judicial Discipline has upheld in an apparent case of CYA.

Peter Paul Olszewski Jr is unemployed

With 93% of the precicnts counted it looks like that Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr has been not been retained as a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas. No Luzerne County Judge has even lost a retention race before, this is history. Even Conahan and Lokuta won retention.


No. . . . 30,844 56%

Yes . . . . 24,715 44%

Although I advocated a No vote as a reflex to what has been going on and out of habit I really can't say anything bad about PPO-2. He was a good District Attorney and he slapped around his incompetent successor from the bench after he dropped the ball on paperwork and procedure in the Hugo Selenski case. But that picture on the front page of the CV sunk him. Even though he lost this job I'm sure he will land on his feet and will not worry where his next meal is coming from.

Judge Burke hangs on with a Yes vote of 34,261 61% to No 21,697 39%. Normally a Judge wins retention with 70 or 80 percent of the vote.

Exit polls

We voted about 6PM tonight and were voters 373 & 374 out of approximately 1000. Wilkes -Barre School Board candidate was greeting people out front and he was the only School Director hopeful that I voted for. Me and Mrs. G also wrote in David Yonki for Jury Commissioner.

Our side polls are now closed and the result that jumps out is the retention questions.

Peter Paul Olszewski Jr Yes 21 14%-No 136 86%

Tom Burke Yes 83 50%-No 83 50%


Of course this is an unscientific sampling of readers of Gort42 done for our amusement but couple this with what I've been hearing and it looks like PPO-2 is going down and Burke will hold on.

The Controller final has

Walter Griffith (R) 80 54%

Wil Toole (I) 44 30%

Bob Morgan 22 16%

Our next Judge

Dick Hughes (R) 90 49%

Tina Gartley (D) 55 30%

Bill Amesbury (D) 35 21%

Predictions-The Judges

In the retention races I think that Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. is going down. Tom Burke may survive but I doubt it.

Tina Gartley will be the top vote getter for one of the two open seats and Dick Hughes will win the other spot. Bill Amesbury is also a very well qualified candidate but this is the first time in my memory that having both nominations may not help.

Retain the Judges?

.

Luzerne County Judges Thomas Burke and Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. are up for retention to the Court of Common Pleas this year and they are feeling the heat of the fallout of the Juvie Brothers scandal that may result in them losing the yes/no vote. They may meet a similar fate as Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Russell Nigro? In 2005 Nigro lost his bid for retention because the state legislature voted themselves an outrageous pay raise in the middle of the night and the voters took their wrath out on him. They have not been accused of any wrongdoing but Conahan and Ciavarella are not on the ballot and they are. People I talk to are in a throw the bums out mood.

.

PPO-2 has been in full campaign mode with a website up and has been raising money. Judge Burke hasn't raised a dime, doesn't have a website but has been pressing the flesh asking people for their vote and answering every question thrown at him.

.

Olszewski’s trip to the Florida condo has been well documented and just may sink him. I've never heard anybody say a bad thing about Judge Burke and I even had him for jury duty recently and thought he was very fair. Then again I had Ciavarella for jury duty a few years ago and was impressed by him. Shows what I know. But I just can't get by this from a local attorney:

.

Olszewski and Burke claim they did nothing wrong. "It wasn't me, It was them. I didn't know. How could I know?" Just men had a duty to discover the truth. Olszewski said the hearings took place a half a mile away in another building. How could he hear? How did an advocacy group over 100 miles away in Philadelphia hear enough to file lawsuits on behalf of more than 500 children? How did the FBI know enough about it to raid juvenile probation? Olszewski says if he knew he would have told the FBI. If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, oh what a party we'd have.

.

I always vote no on these questions no matter what is going on but that's just me and all my Republican friends tell me I'm wrong to vote no on Burke. As unfair as it may seem to be to these gentleman ( I doubt their judgement and tin ears not their integrity) we have to send a message about what has been going on in the Courthouse and the way to do that is to vote no on retention.

.

So tell me in the comments why I'm wrong and vote in the polls on the sidebar.

.

This guy has balls

I spotted this LTE in the CV written by an attorney that recently started practicing in Luzerne County. Under the previous regime of Conahan and Ciavarella he would never win another case in this county again. We will see if things change.


Judge Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. claims he saw nothing, heard nothing and knew nothing about the injustice occurring in the courts of Luzerne County. I don't believe him. I do believe that he would do anything to save his $157,000 a year job, as would his fellow judge, Tom Burke.
.
Terrorists at Guantanimo Bay had more rights than children did in Luzerne County. How would you feel if it were your child who was lied to, tricked and unjustly sent to kiddie concentration camp?
.
Olszewski and Burke claim they did nothing wrong. "It wasn't me, It was them. I didn't know. How could I know?" Just men had a duty to discover the truth. Olszewski said the hearings took place a half a mile away in another building. How could he hear? How did an advocacy group over 100 miles away in Philadelphia hear enough to file lawsuits on behalf of more than 500 children? How did the FBI know enough about it to raid juvenile probation? Olszewski says if he knew he would have told the FBI. If "ifs" and "buts" were candy and nuts, oh what a party we'd have.
.
I was a judicial law clerk in Schuylkill County. In my experience, what went on in the courthouse and in many of the cases was common knowledge among the judges, staff members and law clerks. Even then, almost 10 years ago, stories were coming out of Luzerne County from lawyers and litigants alike, that the judges were crooked, that the cases were fixed. It was not until I started practicing in Luzerne County that I realized that most of the gossip was true.
Peter Paul Olszewski and Thomas Burke have failed us. They have failed to protect us. They have failed to protect our children.

Now it is election time and they want you to know them as "Peter Paul" and "Tom." After they win retention they're back to being "Your Honor," and we the people are back to being nobodies. In this lawyer's opinion, Judge Olszewski and Judge Burke do not deserve to be retained as judges.
.
Attorney Joseph A. Woitko
Beaver Meadows

The question I keep asking is how does everybody know what was going on in Lokuta's courtroom but nobody knew what was going on in Ciavarella's? Zen want's to know why the District Attornerys David Lupas (now Judge) and Jackie Musto Carrol and their staffs did not notice a gross disparity between the offense and the punishment that was meted out?

And how about the Probation Department and the Public Defenders?

PPO-2 answered my question a week ago and the TL has Tom Burke's defense today.


"I can tell you categorically I did not have a single incident where a lawyer came to me and said, ‘By the way, there’s something you should look out for because there may be abuses,’ ” Burke said. “We can look back now and say if there were more checks and balances, maybe these abuses would have been discovered sooner.”

Olszewski answers my question

Luzerne County Judges Thomas Burke and Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. are up for retention to the Court of Common Pleas this year and they are feeling the heat of the fallout of the Juvie Brothers scandal that may result in them losing the yes/no vote. That has never happened to a sitting judge in this county in my memory.

A few days ago I asked how does everybody know what was going on in Lokuta's courtroom but nobody knew what was going on in Ciavarella's?

His response is in the CV today:

Not only were the vast majority of Judge Ciavarella's juvenile court proceedings closed to the public, they were conducted at Penn Place, located approximately ½ mile away from my courtroom in the Luzerne County Courthouse. Furthermore, during my 10 years on the bench, not a single parent, prosecutor, police officer, probation official or judge ever complained to me that Judge Ciavarella routinely denied juveniles their right to counsel. Nor did I know that he accepted "finder's fees" or sentenced juveniles illegally.

PPO-2 has been beat up in the local press and talk radio the last few days over that frat boy picture with Conahan and Ron Bellitiere that was anonymously provided to the local papers. Fair or not a picture is worth a thousand words.

Knowing that he is in trouble Olszewski is now in full campaign mode with a website up and filed a finance report with the PA Department of State indicating that he is raising money.

The website is:

Vote Yes to Retain Judge Peter Paul Olszweski, Jr.

The hompage lists 10 reasons to vote yes including a bunch of awards that he won and winning death penalty convictions when he was District Attorney that more than likely will never be carried out. Overall I think that PPO-2 was a pretty good DA especially when you compare his record to his incompetent successor.

There is not much on the campaign finance report yet and it includes a couple of errors such as listing his party as Republican and listing the office he is seeking as being in the 14th Judicial District (Fayette County).

I have always resisted the guilt by association argument. Heaven knows I've had my picture taken with some unsavory characters over the years. How much this hurts his chances remains to be seen. I always vote no on these questions no matter what is going on but I'm just a contrarian bastard.

Spring Break

(L to R) Judge Peter Paul Olszewski, attorney John Kennedy, Ron Bellitiere and and former Judge Michael Conahan


CV: "It's obviously being done to embarrass me before the election," Olszewski said of the photo...In a tense, hour-long interview with The Citizens' Voice editors and reporters Thursday, Olszewski said he believes the June 2005 photo was mailed anonymously to the media by Conahan and/or his codefendant, former county Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., to hurt his bid for a second 10-year term in November.
"If you publish this, you're doing Mark's bidding," Olszewski said. "You're doing what the most corrupt judges in the world want you to do."...Through his attorney, Al Flora Jr., Ciavarella said the accusation that he was the source of the photo was "absolutely not true." Conahan declined comment through his attorney.

I never get invited to any of the good frat parties. It looks like these guys were playing some serious blender games. McGruff wants to know Who took the picture?

This is nifty

Luzerne County candidate for Judge of the Court of the Common Pleas Dick Hughes is hosting a whitewater rafting trip on the Lehigh River on Saturday, September 19, 2009. The details are on Facebook but not on his website. Get on the stick guys. I think this is one of the most creative fundraising ideas I have ever heard of. I'll be watching college football that day so I can't make it but maybe Kayak Dude and the Blogfather will join in. They are fond of water sports.

Now that we are past Labor Day the other local candidates have some events scheduled.

GOP Controller candidate Walter Griffith has a shindig scheduled for Friday, September 18th in Wilkes-Barre. The details are on his website.

Judicial candidate Tina Gartley has a full slate of events including celebrations of grandparents, beer and polka plus she likes college football. She has an events page on her site.

Double nominee for Judge Bill Amesbury has had some get togethers that nobody bothered to tell me about ahead of time.

The Democratic row officer candidates are out there also but they don't have websites so I'm not sure what they are up to.

I usually don't watch the local newscasts (car hits tree, house burns down) but I will start tuning in for the political commercials. I await the ads that say we should retain Judges Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. and Thomas F. Burke Jr. I have never voted to retain a Judge because I'm a political junkie and I want to see another election and I think that retention elections are BS. Many of my friends have urged me to vote Yes on Burke but nobody has defended PPO-2.

Yes or No

Will Luzerne County Judges Peter Paul Olszewski Jr. and Thomas F. Burke Jr. suffer a similar fate as Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Russell Nigro? In 2005 Nigro lost his bid for retention because the state legislature voted themselves an outrageous pay raise in the middle of the night and the voters took their wrath out on him. There were other issues involved but it could be argued that he was a victim of "guilt by association."


So now the question is will Olszewski and Burke suffer because of the actions of the Juvie Brothers? They have not been accused of any wrongdoing but Conahan and Ciavarella are not on the ballot and they are. I don't have any polling to back it up but people I talk to are in a throw the bums out mood. That's why I also think the Republican row office candidates will do well.


I have never voted Yes in a judicial retention election and I'm not about to start now.

Juvie brothers update

There are now 3 class action lawsuits on behalf of the children who were the victims of Judges Michael Conahan and Mark Ciavarella who railroaded them through the juvinile justice system. The suits says the judges and other defendants conspired to perpetrate "what ranks as one of the largest and most serious violations of children's rights in the history of the American legal system.



Luzerne County President Judge Chet Muroski confirmed that the probe involves more than the PA Child Care investigation. This thing is expanding into allegations that civil cases were being fixed.



Judges Peter Paul Olszewski and Michael Toole have been interviewed by the FBI and we wonder if their stays at the condo in Florida has any thing to do with the feds interest.

Luzerne County Prothonotary Jill Moran is playing "Lets make a Deal" claiming that some people allegedly attempted, without Moran’s "full knowledge and consent, to use Moran to facilitate frauds.” Mark Guydish in the TL doesn't buy it. Moran has always claimed to be the unintentional political puppet, not the puppeteer; the piece being played, not the player. It’s a role she took on again this week with the deal struck in the federal courthouse investigation. She didn’t commit fraud, she was used by those committing it. She is the head of the W-Cat company that was suppossed to be building houses in Mountaintop. Some of her partners were the the Juvie Brother Judges and her law partner Robert Powell plus some people that I know that are going to be hurt .


Conahan's cousin Bill Sharkey was officially fired after pleading guilty to stealing more than $70,000 of seized gambling money over 10 years. He stopped reporting to his courthouse job on Aug. 20, a day after federal agents served a subpoena on his office for records connected to money seized in illegal gambling cases. During his leave from work, Sharkey maintained possession of a county vehicle and county mobile phone. Ciavarella approved the paid leave of absence for Sharkey. Who the hell is in charge, if anyone, of keeping track of county vehicles?

Conahan's brother in law millionaire psychologist Dr. Frank Vita and forger Sandra M. Brulo are also in trouble.