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.
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Law and Order: Gotham - “In the Criminal Justice System of Gotham City the people are represented by three separate, yet equally important groups. The police who investigate crime, the District Attorneys who prosecute the offenders, and the Batman. These are their stories.”
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