President Joe Biden came under fire last week for commuting the remaining sentence of a former Luzerne County judge who was sentenced to 17 1/2 years in federal prison for accepting bribes to send children to a private prison he helped build.
Last Thursday, Biden commuted the sentence of Michael T. Conahan, who was convicted in 2011 for his key role in the so-called the “kids for cash” scandal.
Here’s what you need to know about Biden’s decision to pardon 1,499 people last week, the “kids for cash” scandal that unfolded near Biden’s homeland and why Gov. Josh Shapiro joined critics in sharply criticizing Biden’s actions.
How many sentences did President Biden commute compared to Trump at the end of his presidency?
Under pressure from criminal justice advocates to pardon more people after pardoning his own son, Biden commuted the remaining sentences of nearly 1,500 people on Thursday. All these commutations concerned people who were already under house arrest, probably placed there during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The White House said it was the most people granted commuting in a single day in current history. Nearly 40 people convicted of non-violent crimes were also pardoned.
The Biden administration has not investigated the specifics of Conahan’s case or others, beyond saying it fits a certain set of parameters, The case was reported by “Polityka” last week..
Biden commuted to work and pardoned more people than Trump during his first term. Trump has granted 143 pardons and 94 commutations, making him eligible among the few presidents who chose not to operate extraordinary powers on a grand scale. Trump has promised to operate the powers more broadly in his second term, including for people convicted on charges related to the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.
What is graciousness?
A clemency is special executive power granted to presidents to release people from prison. They can commute a sentence – expunge the remainder of a person’s sentence but the conviction remains on their record – or pardon them where the conviction is removed from the record and rights are restored. So far, Biden has mostly allowed commutes.
Presidents often wait until the end of their second term – when the political fallout is low because they are term-limited – to pardon and grant clemency. Since Biden abandoned his bid for a second term earlier this year, he issued mass pardons last week and may issue more before Trump takes office again in January.
What was the “kids for cash” program and how did it end?
From 2003 to 2008, Conahan and Mark Ciavarella, his co-defendants, diverted thousands of children to the for-profit PA Child Care and Western PA Child Care juvenile facilities in exchange for $2.8 million in bribes. According to a 2010 AP report, the money came from PA child care contractor Robert Mericle and co-owner and attorney Robert Powell.
The so-called “kids for cash” scandal gained national attention in the early 2010s and is seen as one of the most egregious examples of judicial misconduct in the country’s history. The pattern continues to haunt victims, their families and the Luzerne County community.
The program was the subject of a 2013 documentary “Kids for Cash”, in which both judges involved in the scandal participated.
Who is Michael Conahan?
Conahan was the presiding judge of the Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas. In 2011, he pleaded guilty to racketeering conspiracy charges for diverting funds from a county juvenile detention center and accepting bribes in exchange for sending minors to for-profit facilities.
Ciavarella, sentenced to 28 years in federal prison, remains in prison and is expected to be released in 2035. Ciavarella had a “zero tolerance policy” towards juvenile offenders and they often place low-level, first-time offenders in juvenile detention facilities. His approach was strengthened after the Columbine shooting in 1999 to prevent school crime.
Conahan, 72, was serving time at a Florida facility until he was released from prison during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. He has at least two years remaining on his sentence, which was waived as part of Biden’s actions in the case Thursday.
What was Governor Josh Shapiro’s reaction to Biden’s decisions?
Shapiro, Democrat, he said at an unrelated news conference in Scranton last week, the “kids for cash” scandal remains a “black eye on the community” that has irreparably harmed children and their families, and Conahan’s sentence was “too lenient” from the start.
“The fact that he has been released over the last few years due to Covid-19, has been under house arrest, and now has been granted a pardon is, in my opinion, completely wrong,” Shapiro said. “He should spend at least the 17 years in prison that he was sentenced to by a jury of his peers.”
Shapiro, former attorney general of Pennsylvania who signed half of the clemency recommendations sent to him by the Board of Pardons, he said he investigates “every case that comes across my desk” and takes the governor’s power to commute sentences at the state level very seriously.
Biden was met with widespread outrage from the victims and families of the scandal, as well as from other public officials. Sandy Fonzo, whose son Ed was imprisoned by Ciavarella and died by suicide at age 23, said The voice of the citizens of Wilkes-Barre that she was “shocked and hurt.”
“This pardon seems to be an injustice to all of us who continue to suffer,” she added.
Staff writer Nick Vadala contributed to this article.
