One more peice of evidence that jail is big business
 

On 20/20 now:

Luzerne County sits in the heart of northeastern Pennsylvania; Wilkes-Barre is the county seat, a hardscrabble, blue-collar city struggling in this latest recession.

People there were shocked in January when federal prosecutors announced that respected county judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan had pleaded guilty to tax evasion and honest services fraud, the result of a lengthy investigation by the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI. Yesterday the Pa. State Supreme Court overturned hundreds of convictions of low-level offenders, ruling that all juveniles who had appeared in Ciavarella's courtroom without lawyers between 2003 and 2008 had not been adequately informed when they waived their right to counsel.


link

No one who has any direct experience with the penal system can argue otherwise.

wow....i mean......wow...

he got off on sending kids to jail? seriously, wtf?

NY Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/us...nted=1&_r=1&hp

More detail, will piss you off even more when you read it.

Dude, why the big surprise? I agree, it's bullshit, but our justice system is way off, so don't be surprised.

edit: they send a fucking kid to jail for joyriding, but O.J. murders his wife and gets off. That's laughable.

Didn't you theoretically hit and kill somebody with a car, Donte?

Key fact: OJ was acquitted.

No, I asked a question about it, dipshit.

Right. In other words, he didn't do the time for the crime. Why? because he's O.J. Simpson.

His defense lawyer put a better case then the prosecutor. The prosecutor couldn't convince the jury that OJ killed the wife. it's really that simple.

Yeah, the prosecution was pretty terrible. Christopher Darden in particular wasn't exactly stellar.

If true, that's disgusting.

Right whatever you say Donte...heh!!


And what everyone else said, the LAPD eff'ed up their case with OJ which is why he walked.

But take comfort in the fact the Nevada 'got it right' and rectifed that.

Now THAT is laughable...HAHAHA

Why is OJ in jail now?

Because he is ORENTHAL JAMES SIMPSON.

Anyways, this thread is about crooked judges using jail to make money, not about rehashing OJ's lame ass cases.

Is Donte some kind of joke I'm missing, or are you just being a dick?

Bullshit. OJ walked because he's a celebrity with money. He should have been prosecuted from day one. If the LAPD fucked around with me like that, I would be in prison. Why? Because I'm not a celebrity.

I know what the thread is about, I was using OJ as an example to show how crooked the whole fucking system is.

To your first question yes to both...if you haven't been paying attention to the news as of late make the swooshing sound of a plane passing over your head...thus the joke is on you.

And it's funny when people talk about celebs with money and they are walking we say it like it's some kind of surprise.

We all know that anyone with a greta paid lawyer is going to do their best to see their client not do any time, now just think....if OJ walked up in there with a PD would he have been free?

ON THE FLIPSIDE: Does anyone care to explain the 2nd time around?

BUT MORE to the topic at hand SINCE WE ARE SUPPOSED to be talking about KIDS being arrested, did anyone listen to the one kid who had his legal representation from the courtroom BEFORE his trial was started? Pa is going to have its hands full to see how many of these jeveniles were sentenced fairly. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Pa appoint an oversight committee to ensure that the record numbers of juvies aren't sent to jail just for spitting on the sidewalk.

I still find this disturbing from Moe's article:

From 1997 to 2003, juveniles appeared before Judge Ciavarella without counsel at more than five times the state average, and from 2003 through 2007, that rate was around 10 times the state average.