Thomas Saylor, Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court, spoke to the Pennsylvania Press Club today.
According to Brad Bumsted of the Tribune-Review, Saylor denied any coordinated effort to make sure the decision to suspend Kathleen Kane’s law license was unanimous.
“It just worked out the way it did,” the Chief Justice responded.
The Court currently consists of three Republicans and two Democrats.
Saylor went on to state that the Court only considered the petition by the Disciplinary Board concerning her conduct as a lawyer. In other words, they did not judge her case and made clear she wouldn’t be forced to resign by their action.
At the same time, according to Kevin Zwick of Capitolwire, Kane is turning over some illicit emails to the Judicial Conduct Board.
“All I can tell you is the folks that reviewed them decided it was appropriate to refer for further review,” Kane’s spokesman Chuck Ardo stated.
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23 Responses
Remember the case of Bruce Carsia? Allegheny County lawyer got caught trying to bribe a cop in a criminal case. Claimed his crime was only due to being a cocaine addict, went to rehab, and returned to practice law after a short probation. Again getting lots of court appointments to represent indigent defendants at govt expense. Strange…..
elroy – what do you mean “leak?” What leak?
Thanks Senator RBC, for citing just one real world example of how strange are the happenings in PA judicial world. You’d think McCullough stealing from clients would be a threat to PA citizens and an embarrassment to the Bar that would be reason to immediately suspend his law license. Do you think his wife being a Comwlth Ct judge has anything to do with the delay?
LOL … Cruz-Juice. Even worse! And he has met him 3 times!!!!!
HaHaHa-
I have to go with rsklaroff on this one: he’s drenched in Cruz juice, not Trump juice.
Though, I can see how it’s hard to tell as Cruz and Trump rarely attack each other and hold many common bigoted views.
@ Ha3:
Illustrating your poor reading-retention skills is your claim that I like Trump; repeatedly, I have expressed strong preference for Cruz, whom I’ve met 3x.
Again no one asked Saylor how someone convicted of stealing client money and diverting some of it to Republican campaigns still has his license. (Chuck McCullough, former Republican Allegheny County Council member and husband of Commonwealth Court Judge Patricia McCullough)
sklaroff – Go wipe the Trump-juice off your chin.
@ Ha3:
The presumption that I consume jello is incorrect, but you appear to be gorged by Kool-Aid.
DD – please stop replying to that mental patient (sklaroff). Perhaps then he will stop commenting here and go back to eating his Jello.
@ DD:
Instead of issuing a prudent mea-culpa, you have truly entered fantasy-land; even in Disney-[Land]/[World], there are both three other “lands” and ancillary entities in Orlando that comprise more reality-based amusement parks.
Montco PA Dem-
I think I see Kane’s plan: reveal all the corrupt judges and prosecutors, and there won’t be anyone left to run her trial.
If there is still one judge and prosecutor left, she can call all the corrupt ones to the stand as part of her defense. This will extend the trial until the end of her term in Jan 2017.
At that point, the GOP will drop the charges once she’s out of office.
And just to say explicitly what most of these comments are implying — these emails (above and beyond their disgusting content) are really the first documented, concrete evidence of this prosecutor-judicial conflict of interest. It is a situation that many have always suspected and even assumed to be fact…but now we have proof. And this proof should be enough to shake Pennsylvania’s legal establishment to its core.
Instead, it appears they will close ranks and make sure they kill the messenger.
20,000,000 emails from the servers of the Office of the Attorney General were destroyed by acting Attorney General William Ryan. It has been reported that the Porn emails were only a small fraction of the total.
We are about to learn how much evidence of corruption was included in the order to destroy OAG email.
Perhaps Kane’s “leak” came from recovered documents?
AOPC is also a joke. When the litigant attempted to file an appeal of Judge Dobson Order, the deputy administrator (Clay Smith) at Mercer County Domestic Relations refused to accept the appeal and threatened to arrest the litigant if he did not leave the office immediately. Upon complaint to AOPC, an administrator (Joseph Mittleman)there stonewalled the complaint, kept promising a reply and action which never came, then stopped communicating at all with the complainant, and buried the complaint without ever responding. Nobody at AOPC ever acknowledged the complaint in writing and never took any disciplinary action against the court staffer for his criminal action of official repression.
Judicial Conduct Board is a joke. Judge Dobson in Mercer County refused to let a litigant speak, then wrote an Opinion declaring he did not deny due process. Yet, in a bizarre footnote admitted he refused to let litigant speak or present evidence because judge did not like what he thought the litigant was going to say. Now you know the meaning of “pre-judge”. Upon complaint, Judicial Conduct Board found no evidence of misconduct by the liar Judge Dobson.
Observer and HaHaHa: That chummy and unethical situation is what PA has had for decades. No need to be surprised. Same chumminess exists between the PSP attorney and the AOG attorney (acting as administrative “judge”) in gun law appeals. Entire system is corrupt.
Observer – I have been saying that for months. That explains why the Courts have been complicit in this witch hunt.
Imagine your friend or relative before a Court for trial or sentencing. The Judge convicts and gives the maximum sentence – just what the prosecutor asked for. Then you find out that the prosecutor and the Judge are buds … so chummy that they exchange racist, sexist, disgusting e-mails.
Something is rotten here. Vaira is right.
Former EDPA USA Peter Vaira published an extremely convincing commentary in today’s paper Inquirer that was – unsurprisingly – censored from the website version. In it, he explains the undeniable and destructive conflicts of interest that the porn email chains have already revealed. How can ANY of these judges be exchanging emails with attorneys who will come before them? Vaira demands that the Supremes appoint an Independent Counsel, but as we see above, Saylor is blind to the misconduct all around him. Or maybe he is in it up to his ears… My money is on Corruption at the top – always a good bet in Pennsylvania.
Multi-Tasker General-
Thanks for clarifying.
I suspected there was a delineation, but I wasn’t sure since judges are also lawyers, and lawyers interact with judges on some cases.
I am sure they are (or already have) filed “complaints” with the Disciplinary Board.
Diano, the Judicial Conduct Board only investigates judicial conduct. The Disciplinary Board of the PA Supreme Court investigates attorneys. There is no overlap.
Question: Does the “Judicial Conduct Board” get only the emails involving judges or does cover non-judges for this matter?