Corrupt “Kids for Cash” Judge Granted Clemency

President Biden’s grant of mass clemency last week did not initially generate the degree of controversy as his earlier pardon of his son, partly because most people were not familiar with the cases. But as individual cases in this mass clemency are examined, very dubious examples are starting to emerge.

WaPo columnist Heather Long is appalled at one of the cases. “My jaw dropped when I saw Michael Conahan, a former judge involved in a notorious ‘kids for cash’ scandal in Pennsylvania, among the nearly 1,500 people President Joe Biden granted clemency to last week…. Conahan and fellow judge Mark Ciavarella Jr. were accused of receiving cash kickbacks in exchange for helping to construct two for-profit juvenile detention facilities in Luzerne County and then sentencing young people to those facilities to keep them full.”

Not only was the judge corruptly taking money to send delinquents to private rather than public lock-ups. That would have been bad enough, but it was much worse than that.

To maximize the payout, they often gave kids the harshest possible sentence. Young people who were first-time offenders and probably should have received a warning or community service would end up locked up. Some were younger than 13. What the judges did caused tremendous harm to thousands of young people and their families. One young man died by suicide. Many youths became depressed and dropped out of high school.

How did such an undeserving miscreant receive the grace of presidential clemency? This is, once again, a case insufficient investigation by an outgoing executive hurriedly handing out clemency during his “lame duck” period.

Ms. Long reports:

When I reached out to the White House, an administration official said this wasn’t a case-by-case decision. The Biden team set broad criteria, and Conahan matched them. The plan was clemency for nonviolent offenders who were seen as low-risk and had been released to home confinement after a legal review process.

That explanation isn’t going down well with many in Pennsylvania. Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro called the clemency “absolutely wrong.” Some victims are speaking out in shock. There’s similar disbelief in Illinois that Rita Crundwell — the former comptroller of the city of Dixon who orchestrated a $54 million embezzlement scheme — was also on Biden’s sentence-reduction list. Crundwell was supposed to serve time until 2028.

For Biden, this is another unforced error. More broadly, it raises fresh questions about presidential clemency going too far and whether it should exist at all.

I would not favor abolishing the clemency power, but some restraints are in order. Some years back, I proposed an amendment to the California Constitution to limit the governor to reprieves during the “lame duck” period, leaving pardons and commutations to the next governor. Over the years, we have seen the worst abuses committed by outgoing executives who no longer have anything to fear from the voters.

The proposal was killed in committee. The objection was that we hadn’t seen these abuses on the state level to that point, only at the federal level. Why lock the barn door when no horses have been stolen yet? Eight years later, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, on his way out the door, granted an undeserved pardon to a murderer as a favor to a political buddy, the murderer’s father. That’s why.