The LuLac Edition #1710, August 11th, 2011

PHOTO INDEX: 28 YEARS.


28 YEARS FOR CIAVARELLA

Most of the observers in the Courtroom today in Scranton were a bit surprised when Judge Edwin Kosik sentenced Mark Ciavarella to 336 months behind bars. Quickly reporters and on lookers alike began ciphering like they used to say in the old days to get a number in real time, real years. It translated out to 28 years. Of course Defense Attorney Al Flora will appeal the length of the sentence but if this stands Ciavarella will be 89 when he gets out of prison. His children will be close to his age now when the sentence is up. The Juvenile’s he was accused of damaging will be in their mid 50s. Ciavarella definitely proclaimed his innocence in the cash exchange for juvenile’s stating that he didn’t do anything in his court that other judge’s performed. He said he wanted transcripts of every case released saying what he read didn’t jive with the letters of complaint. The former Judge, while apologizing to his family, the county, myriads of others stated that while he did commit crimes, he steadfastly denied the Kids for Cash allegations. In 2009 when this story first broke I was on WYOU TV with a local Attorney. The Attorney said that one thing Ciavarella was insistent upon even back then was the fact that he did not sell kids to fill up the Juvenile Detention Center. This has been the one consistent aspect of Mark Ciavarella’s defense from his lawyers, his family, his friends, his defenders and this morning in Court.
After the Courtroom and the fourth floor was cleared I spoke to a mother who’s daughter stood before Ciavarella. Laureen Transue said that she felt for the family of Judge Ciavarella. She said that she was sympathetic to their pain being away from a loved one because she felt that same way when her daughter Hillary was remanded by Ciavarella. She did say that while she wasn’t happy about the circumstances, she felt that justice had been done. An Attorney who served as a Prosecutor, Defense Attorney, and has practiced any kind of law you could imagine weighed in on the sentence. “It was huge, this is a lot of time. But I’m not too surprised because Mark Ciavarella could never keep his mouth shut about any of this. And that was a big factor in the sentencing”.
So Ciavarella bade goodbye to his family and voluntarily remanded himself to the federal authorities. More on this in future edition of LuLac. We were in the Courtroom today and will be on WYLN TV 35’s Topic A and Late Edition at 10pm today filing our reports. We'll be back on LuLac later with more in courtroom news and observations from this morning.