Speaker 1: What's sad my all of you are about to be
Speaker 1: I'm Robert Evans. This is Behind the Bastards podcast, Bad
Speaker 1: People tell you all about him. My guest today, Mr
Speaker 1: Jason Petty, a k A prop man. Drop the government
Speaker 1: name and let me go. I'm mile here. That's how
Speaker 1: much I care about you. There are two people in
Speaker 1: the world that call me Jason. It's my wife and
Speaker 1: a lady named Jen hat Maker. They're only two people
Speaker 1: on earth that called me Jason. Robert and now Rob Jason.
Speaker 1: We can bleep your your legal name's all good. That
Speaker 1: worry about ice CAD, all that stuff has been expunged.
Speaker 1: Those those are mine. I was a miner. So you
Speaker 1: can't talk about the Oh that is appropriate for today's topic,
Speaker 1: because today we're talking about a couple of aspects of
Speaker 1: the juvenile justice system that I think we're all gonna
Speaker 1: find fun. Oh no, real, real good time. I don't
Speaker 1: need okay, go ahead, no, no, no, I mean, how
Speaker 1: do you how do you feel about kids? You know, well,
Speaker 1: I love kids. I got two of them. I love
Speaker 1: the juvenile system. I've been a part of it. Um, Okay,
Speaker 1: it works pretty well. Yes. So so there's a number
Speaker 1: of connections with this. My father was an s d
Speaker 1: p O two for California, which is a deputy probation
Speaker 1: officer for the juvenile system in Los Angeles. He retired
Speaker 1: from it, you know, because it's like, like we said before,
Speaker 1: can't change system from withinside. It just doesn't work. So
Speaker 1: like so he kind of bailed out, but he at
Speaker 1: least was like, at least I could be an advocate
Speaker 1: for for the time that I'm there and when. Some
Speaker 1: of y'all may know that I used to I was
Speaker 1: a teacher before I was doing music and poetry full time,
Speaker 1: and I started off at My first teaching job was
Speaker 1: as central what was a substitute position, but it was
Speaker 1: with all of the juvenile halls in California, so East
Speaker 1: like Correctional Facility Camp, Rocky Camp, half a Ball. So
Speaker 1: my first teaching experience was all in the juvenile juvenile systems.
Speaker 1: So like, I'm very connected to the store you're about
Speaker 1: to talk right now, and again I was in the system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's there's an anthropological theory I'm kind of fond of,
Speaker 1: which is the the idea that like essentially all civilization
Speaker 1: and by that I don't mean necessarily like skyscrapers and
Speaker 1: electric lights, which is the idea of like human beings
Speaker 1: organizing in groups to do things started because of the
Speaker 1: need to raise kids, because like it is evolutionarily advantageous
Speaker 1: to have a big brain that allows you to make tools. Um,
Speaker 1: but at a certain point, our brain's got so big
Speaker 1: that you can't put you can't like just come out
Speaker 1: with a brain that big, we're gonna kill the person
Speaker 1: giving birth to you, right, Like, you can only give
Speaker 1: birth to a brain so big. So we we start
Speaker 1: and our kids started coming out younger and younger and
Speaker 1: less and less capable of doing anything right, Like you
Speaker 1: you're if you're there, like the birthing of like a
Speaker 1: calf or a baby, their fine or like a dog.
Speaker 1: Yeah they could just like they're up and they're doing
Speaker 1: three minutes. Yeah, yeah, pretty fucking quick in most cases.
Speaker 1: And like by the time a human baby have like
Speaker 1: a puppy and a baby at the same time, by
Speaker 1: the time that human baby can like kind of wattle,
Speaker 1: that dog will more or less be able to like
Speaker 1: hunt the dogs find yes, yeah, the dogs ready for
Speaker 1: the world. There's a whole premise in in my My
Speaker 1: My book Terra form where I talk about the development
Speaker 1: of culture, and it's because we're the only species that
Speaker 1: aren't born with everything we need to survive. We had
Speaker 1: to create language, we had to create you know, covers
Speaker 1: and stuff like exactly what that thing is. And one
Speaker 1: of the only things you, like you write in my
Speaker 1: z own right now, one of the only things that
Speaker 1: is universal in human civilization across every country and time,
Speaker 1: was the idea of protecting our children, that human thing
Speaker 1: in the world. Like, I don't have kids, I don't
Speaker 1: ever want to have kids, but I still think I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding, Like it's every adult's fucking responsibility if there's
Speaker 1: if you can protect a child, to protect the child,
Speaker 1: like period period like, and that's why the people were
Speaker 1: talking about today are such fucking nightmares. They are human
Speaker 1: humans who have like fundamentally decided. But what if we
Speaker 1: did the opposite bro for like money, racism and to
Speaker 1: get elected. I wish I could see on face right now, because,
Speaker 1: like I said, we got two different stories this week.
Speaker 1: For our first story today, proply what have you heard
Speaker 1: about the kids for cash scandal? I was also a
Speaker 1: high school teacher, so yes, I've heard of this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not great, so too. Before we get into this,
Speaker 1: I think we need to talk a little bit about, um,
Speaker 1: some relevant background. So, violent crime in the United States
Speaker 1: almost quadrupled between nineteen sixty and nine by serious crimes,
Speaker 1: including including homicide. We're all falling, so crime is by
Speaker 1: starting to drop again. Um but right at around the
Speaker 1: time crime was beginning its fall. That continued up until
Speaker 1: fairly recently, uh, twenty four hour news in the Internet
Speaker 1: really started to get going, and stories about violent crime
Speaker 1: and crimes directed against particularly white suburban people were hugely popular.
Speaker 1: You can make a lot of money in the new
Speaker 1: you know, right, yeah, and crimes committed by teenagers against
Speaker 1: particularly that demographic or like the easiest way to get
Speaker 1: fucking eyeballs on screen. Yes, I know. Yeah. I am
Speaker 1: a child of war on drugs, gang in junctions. I
Speaker 1: am a child of all this. Y yeah. Now. The
Speaker 1: problem was discussed through obviously, uh, the news and and
Speaker 1: and fictional media. It was also something that academics talked about.
Speaker 1: In November of nineteen, a political scientist named John delu
Speaker 1: Leo Jr. Wrote an article for The Weekly Standard, which
Speaker 1: is a right wing opinion magazine, titled The Coming of
Speaker 1: the Super predators. This art was based. Yeah, this person
Speaker 1: ruined my childhood. Yeah, ruin because of the work he's
Speaker 1: about to talk about. Go ahead, Yeah, he he dropped
Speaker 1: a bomb on I don't know, a few million kids
Speaker 1: childhoods conservatively. Um. The article that he wrote was based
Speaker 1: primarily on data from boys in Philadelphia that showed that
Speaker 1: six percent of of young like of minor male male
Speaker 1: miners in Philadelphia accounted for more than half of the
Speaker 1: serious crimes committed by male children in that city. UM. Now,
Speaker 1: as you might have guessed number one, there's a number
Speaker 1: of reasons for this. This is just Philadelphia. There's a
Speaker 1: lot going on here. It's maybe not the best thing
Speaker 1: to draw broad sweeping societal conclusions from, especially in a vacuum. Um. And,
Speaker 1: as you probably won't be surprised to hear, the article
Speaker 1: that Delileo wrote was filled with very uncomfortable race related
Speaker 1: lines like this paragraph. While the trouble will be greatest
Speaker 1: in black inner city neighborhoods, other places are also certain
Speaker 1: to have burgeoning youth crime problems that will spill over
Speaker 1: into upscale central city districts, entering suburbs, and even the
Speaker 1: rural heartland. To underscore, this point. Abraham Recount was one
Speaker 1: of the people who's talking to. Recounted a recent town
Speaker 1: hall meeting in a white working class section of the
Speaker 1: city that has fallen on hard times. They were coming
Speaker 1: afraid of their own children. There were some big beefy
Speaker 1: guys there too, and they're asking me what am I
Speaker 1: going to do to control their children. There's a lot
Speaker 1: going there, including the idea that like, well, crime in
Speaker 1: the inner city is obviously going to happen. It's a
Speaker 1: problem because it might spill over into upscale areas and
Speaker 1: in the suburbs. Right like that, there's so much happening here.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to like because I'm so like even the
Speaker 1: time frame, like like I I'm revella my age here,
Speaker 1: but I'm at high school when this is happening. So
Speaker 1: like I am who he's talking about, you know, inner
Speaker 1: city black male, you know what I'm saying. So I'm
Speaker 1: like and just little that stuff would drop and it's
Speaker 1: like you see people like I'm walking home from school,
Speaker 1: then my pe clothes no less, you know, because I
Speaker 1: got I got shipped out to a suburbian high school,
Speaker 1: you know, so like it wasn't my I was long
Speaker 1: story short joint custody, YadA YadA. Right, So I went
Speaker 1: to the nicer high school. So walking home, I'm just
Speaker 1: like stupid headphones on, listening to Wu Tang and like
Speaker 1: watching the lady Clutcher person cross the street and just
Speaker 1: about like you're nervous about situ And I'm like, dude, like,
Speaker 1: I'm you see my nerd assmpe clothes with my bow
Speaker 1: straps on my backpack, Like I'm really up. You're telling
Speaker 1: me I'm a problem. And the reason why I'm a
Speaker 1: problem is because this is the source material that us
Speaker 1: moving into your city, into this part of town is
Speaker 1: going to bring the problems that you're talking about in
Speaker 1: this thing. Absolutely, yeah, that's that's exactly, and that that
Speaker 1: kind of fear, that's that specific population sphere is what
Speaker 1: he's stoking with this. And obviously the bulk of this article,
Speaker 1: there's that little study from Philadelphia that's um that that
Speaker 1: is kind of the statistical nut for for what he's
Speaker 1: writing here. Um, But most of it's based on interviews
Speaker 1: with police officers and other individuals with a very obvious bias.
Speaker 1: One district attorney is cited in the article is saying
Speaker 1: about children they kill her maim on impulse without any
Speaker 1: intelligible motive, and a police officer is quoted as saying,
Speaker 1: I never used to be scared. Now I say a
Speaker 1: quick hail Mary. Every time I get a call at
Speaker 1: night involving juveniles, I pray I go home in one
Speaker 1: piece to my own kids. See this book. It's like
Speaker 1: all these times that we say, like like fast forward
Speaker 1: to Tamir Rice and you're treating this fourteen year old
Speaker 1: like a goddamn adult. It's this ship. It's like, like
Speaker 1: we not just keep like we're kids kids like everybody else.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I'm so triggered right now. This Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's not going to get less frustrated. So
Speaker 1: in the article, these quotes are followed by quotes from
Speaker 1: a group of what who Delulio describes as life term
Speaker 1: inmates in a prison uh in New Jersey. UM And
Speaker 1: Delulo makes sure we know of these inmates that quote.
Speaker 1: Many of them are black males from inner city Newark
Speaker 1: and Camden. Uh. And these guys he quotes, is being
Speaker 1: terrified of today's super predator children too. So he's being like, look,
Speaker 1: even these black criminals in prison are scared of kids
Speaker 1: these days, like it's it's really a pretty horrific article. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Wikipedia, Delulio is a Democrat today. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's true. I don't know much about his
Speaker 1: present life. It is important we be clear that he
Speaker 1: was wrong about everything predicted in this article. His big
Speaker 1: prediction is that because of these super predators, juvenile crime
Speaker 1: would triple by two thousand ten. But of course, by
Speaker 1: the time he wrote this article, juvenile crime had already
Speaker 1: been dropping for a couple of years, and by two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, juvenile homicides had plunged by two thirds. So
Speaker 1: he's literally the opposite of what he says happens pretty much. Um,
Speaker 1: and despite the fact that he was perfectly wrong about
Speaker 1: what's pretty much the only noteworthy claim he makes in
Speaker 1: his career, delu Leo received two awards in two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten for Excellence and Academics. Of course, again, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. What matters that you gave people an excuse
Speaker 1: to be scared and do violence. Um, that's all you
Speaker 1: gotta do. Yeah, what's what's interesting about this moment is
Speaker 1: around I'm a really show you all some some Mike.
Speaker 1: Actual politics was like around the end of the nineties,
Speaker 1: there was a call that came from really from jail
Speaker 1: that was like, you gotta stop doing drive bys. And
Speaker 1: it was basic because it was like listen to it's
Speaker 1: just it's just not g like, this is not We're
Speaker 1: not spending our lifetime in prison for y'all to just
Speaker 1: drive by somewhere and shoot them. So so even like
Speaker 1: even the violent crime kind of slowing down, that was
Speaker 1: like we did that for ourselves, you know, saying like
Speaker 1: like it wasn't and granted obviously like the War on
Speaker 1: Jugs and the Gang of Junctions and Rico and all
Speaker 1: this different stuff, and the gang uptick, Like obviously, like
Speaker 1: of course you're gonna drop. You're gonna drop crime if
Speaker 1: gentrification starts other stuff that the economy is expanding huge
Speaker 1: gets created. I'm like, we got jobs number one. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: we're adults now we have jobs, and there's other things
Speaker 1: to do happening around. Yeah, you start to see the
Speaker 1: impact of the fact that they got lit out of
Speaker 1: fucking gasoline, you know, stating in like what the seventies
Speaker 1: of the eighties, so like a bunch of ship happens,
Speaker 1: that's why crime drops by so much. Total it's important
Speaker 1: is that doulu Leo is again perfectly wrong. Absolute. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 1: the despite this fact, his work had a huge influence
Speaker 1: on how juvenile crime was perceived, and it led to
Speaker 1: a massive change nationwide and how often children were tried
Speaker 1: and sentenced as adults. I want to quote now from
Speaker 1: an article in NBC News about this period because it
Speaker 1: makes a good point about some broader trends that Delulo's
Speaker 1: work fed into. So he's not obviously the beginning of
Speaker 1: this quote. Just a few years before, the news media
Speaker 1: had introduced the terms wilding and wolfpack to the national
Speaker 1: vocabulary to describe five teenagers, four black and one Hispanic,
Speaker 1: who were convicted and later exonerated, of the rape of
Speaker 1: a woman in New York Central Park. That's this kind
Speaker 1: of animal savagery was already in the conversation, said Kim
Speaker 1: Taylor Thompson, a law professor at New York University. The
Speaker 1: super predator language began a process of allowing us to
Speaker 1: suspend our feelings of empathy towards young people of color.
Speaker 1: And again, I might I might quible about it that
Speaker 1: this began the processes a moment. Yeah, yeah, one of
Speaker 1: started it escalates. I think it's fair to say that
Speaker 1: it does escalate absolutely, and and and more to the point,
Speaker 1: it leads to kind of some structural things that that
Speaker 1: that escalate. How this is actually like built into the
Speaker 1: legal system. Um, now, it's probably worth noting before we
Speaker 1: move on that delu Leo's mentor was a political scientist
Speaker 1: named James Q. Wilson. Now. Mr Wilson got famous for
Speaker 1: writing a nineteen five book with the title Crime and
Speaker 1: Human Nature, which argued that criminality was caused by specific
Speaker 1: genetic factors. You will not again. Yeah, he also got
Speaker 1: famous for chasing around Dennis the Menace, Mr Wilson because
Speaker 1: this is that, Mr. Yes. Anyway, go on, Um, he
Speaker 1: spends a lot of his book writing paragraphs like this.
Speaker 1: A central problem, perhaps the central problem and improving the
Speaker 1: relationship between white and black Americans, is the difference in
Speaker 1: racial crime rates. No matter how whit a center guilty
Speaker 1: a stranger, maybe he carries with him in public the
Speaker 1: burdens or benefits of his group identity. Now you know, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the fact that like, yes, people carry with them like
Speaker 1: the benefits of how their group, the group that they
Speaker 1: visually at least belonged to his person by society. Sure, um,
Speaker 1: but it's yeah, there's a lot of kind of eugenic
Speaker 1: c e ship in this book where he's sort of
Speaker 1: talking about like certain populations are more prone for crime,
Speaker 1: and it definitely definitely ignores a lot of important things
Speaker 1: like how economics feed into it and how certain historical trends.
Speaker 1: There's obviously he's he's he's piece of shit. Um. And
Speaker 1: it's not surprising that racists said racist ship. What is
Speaker 1: surprising is that both of these guys, these very right wing,
Speaker 1: very kind of white supremacist e thinkers, are backed not
Speaker 1: just by conservatives but by supposedly liberal colleges. And what
Speaker 1: they wrote was uncritically disseminated by large chunks of the
Speaker 1: mainstream media. And here's NBC again. The Marshall Projects review
Speaker 1: of forty major news outlets in the five years after
Speaker 1: his Weekly Standard article shows the new legis neilogism hopping
Speaker 1: up nearly three hundred times, and that is an undercount.
Speaker 1: There was the Philadelphia Inquirers Fawnding magazine profile of Delu Leo,
Speaker 1: who grew up there. Until recently, Pennsylvania had the country's
Speaker 1: largest population of people still serving life sentences without parole
Speaker 1: for crimes they committed as children. There was also a lengthy,
Speaker 1: mostly gentle New Yorker profile, a spot on the New
Speaker 1: York Times is op ed page, and an appearance on
Speaker 1: CBS Evening News. The media exposure led to conference invitations,
Speaker 1: which led to more media exposure. The words super predator
Speaker 1: became so much a part of the national vocabulary that
Speaker 1: journalists and talk show hosts used it without reference to
Speaker 1: de Lulo, including even Oprah Winfrey in a segment on
Speaker 1: Good Morning America. So this is one of those things
Speaker 1: that is just such a successful piece of fucking culture
Speaker 1: jambing Clinton, Yeah, Clinton to Everyone uses it, and most
Speaker 1: people don't even recognize know anything about de lu Leo,
Speaker 1: know anything about Wilson, know anything about like where this
Speaker 1: comes from. They just kind of take it as scientific fact. Almost.
Speaker 1: That moment, even with with Oprah, is like stellar reputation
Speaker 1: with black people. That moment, like we never forgot that.
Speaker 1: Yeah you know what I'm saying. And I was like, yo, really,
Speaker 1: like you really don't let this man talk talk about
Speaker 1: us like this. Yeah, And it's perfect what he's saying.
Speaker 1: It's really perfectly framed for shows like Oprah was doing
Speaker 1: for like daytime TV rights, the kind of thing that
Speaker 1: people who are like in the middle of their day
Speaker 1: will will stop to hear about because you're you're tickling
Speaker 1: that amygdala, you're making the like for one thing, adults
Speaker 1: are always a little not always, but it is very
Speaker 1: common for adults to be kind of uncomfortable around teenagers.
Speaker 1: They're weird. They like things you don't understand. Yeah you
Speaker 1: forgot what it was like, Yeah, yeah, exactly. Uh and
Speaker 1: if you can again, there's a shipload of money to
Speaker 1: be made and tapping into the fact that a lot
Speaker 1: of adults are just kind of uncomfortable around teams and
Speaker 1: two our to our I mean I taught freshman, so
Speaker 1: I was around teens all the time. But in adults defense,
Speaker 1: teams are weird. Oh yeah, I one in my and
Speaker 1: without a taser for sure. I got one in my house,
Speaker 1: and I'll be like, I love you, you you are you
Speaker 1: are you are my child. I am raising you. That's
Speaker 1: weird because like, oh yeah, yeah, like are sorts of
Speaker 1: all sorts of music that that I just think, finally, people,
Speaker 1: finally music is wrong. It took a long time. It
Speaker 1: took when before me who said that music was wrong
Speaker 1: was wrong. But now it's wrong. Now that's wrong. Now,
Speaker 1: now it's wrong. Now I am. I am happy to
Speaker 1: report that my child is oh so when it comes
Speaker 1: to music, and like, we actually like a lot of
Speaker 1: the same stuff except for her B two BTS obsession.
Speaker 1: But besides that, we're like, we're pretty much on the
Speaker 1: same page. But that's an exception. Her father's a rapper,
Speaker 1: so of course she's gonna know a little bit more
Speaker 1: about music. Yeah, it's uh anyway, so um. The fear
Speaker 1: dreamed up or drummed up by these nonsense theories and
Speaker 1: the media recitations of them, led to a surge in
Speaker 1: zero tolerance, in zero tolerance rules for in school, and
Speaker 1: a lot of horrible ship we covered in an episode
Speaker 1: we did titled the War on Children. If you want
Speaker 1: more of an idea of how politicians grabbed onto all
Speaker 1: of this, I should read a quote from Senator or
Speaker 1: in Hatch in n We've got to quit cuddling these
Speaker 1: violent kids. Like nothing that's going on. Getting some of
Speaker 1: these do good or liberals to do what's right is
Speaker 1: real tough. We'd all like to rehabilitate these kids, but
Speaker 1: by gosh, we are in a different age, right, or
Speaker 1: in Hatch everybody or Hatch everybody the man who made
Speaker 1: sure that you can sell supplements filled with lead to
Speaker 1: people and there's no regulations on it. Good man, that's
Speaker 1: our guy we love, or in hatch um. So today, however,
Speaker 1: we're not. This is just a leaded because the thing
Speaker 1: that we are talking is one of the worst crimes.
Speaker 1: All this rhetoric and racism directly enabled. This is a
Speaker 1: story of greed that begat violence on an almost industrial scale,
Speaker 1: the Cash for Kids scandal. Now are two main bastards
Speaker 1: for today are a pair of former judges, Mark Ciavarella
Speaker 1: uh and Michael Conna hand YEA sie Evarella is how
Speaker 1: it's pronounced, more or less now. Mark A. Siavarella was
Speaker 1: born on March third, nineteen fifty in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: He was raised on the east end of the city,
Speaker 1: and he went to a Catholic high school. Here's how
Speaker 1: the New York Times described his upbringing, quote a stellar
Speaker 1: athlete and student. Judge Siavarella was the son of a
Speaker 1: brewery worker and a phone company operator nicknamed Scooch. Like
Speaker 1: his father, he drove a beat up both swagen Beetle
Speaker 1: for years, and even after moving away, he visited his
Speaker 1: aging mother daily until she died in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: The boy's name was Scooch, Scooch, Scooch, and Scooch grows up.
Speaker 1: You know, to his credit, he's working class, like a
Speaker 1: lot of most people become judges, not don't come from
Speaker 1: like scooch bro. Like you know you, Scooch, Yeah, like
Speaker 1: you one of the guys, Bro. They don't. They don't
Speaker 1: call rich kids scooch. Nobody, nobody ever went to a
Speaker 1: British boarding school and got called scoop bro, Scooch man,
Speaker 1: you and scooch yall cut school, went the cornered liquor store,
Speaker 1: stole a beer and like hung out and smoked your
Speaker 1: granddad's cigarettes, like Scooch stole a lot of cigarettes. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna say thirteen at least. Yeah. So after law school
Speaker 1: he went to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. I think that's
Speaker 1: how it pronounced. Uh. Mark Siavarella ran for a seat
Speaker 1: in the country's Court of Common Pleas in August of
Speaker 1: nineteen now as a judge. Because he wins, he becomes
Speaker 1: known for the fact that he is a harsh sentence
Speaker 1: er um and also kind of like he he likes
Speaker 1: to be kind of the judge judy dude. He likes
Speaker 1: to have these like quips and ship and I want
Speaker 1: to play an ad from his nineteen campaign to make
Speaker 1: it clear how inside of the super predator zeitgeist this
Speaker 1: dude was. I hate this guy already. Yeah, he's not
Speaker 1: great and convicted of hurder right or violent primes against
Speaker 1: our children or the elderly. You're gonna expect that I
Speaker 1: will have closed the maximum sentence allowed by law. Now,
Speaker 1: you can't do that. No, legally, No, you can't run
Speaker 1: to be a judge. There's a thing called the Judicial
Speaker 1: Code of Conduct, dude. One of the things that says
Speaker 1: is that if you're running to be a judge, you
Speaker 1: can't make pledges or promises to voters about your rulings
Speaker 1: other than that they'll be faithful and impartial because you're
Speaker 1: a judge. Let me, okay, can I can I put
Speaker 1: my teacher hat on right now? Okay? Listen, civics lesson.
Speaker 1: You got your three branches of government right, and two
Speaker 1: of the three branches are elected officials. The reason why
Speaker 1: you don't elect quote unquote judges are because they are
Speaker 1: supposed to be above the fray. You're supposed to not
Speaker 1: be able to because of popularity, what's going on in
Speaker 1: the world. You're supposed to not be They are supposed
Speaker 1: to be above that because they are adjudicating the rights
Speaker 1: and privileges of everybody around us. So you're not supposed
Speaker 1: to do that. You even running an ad is already like, fam,
Speaker 1: what did you You can't like? This is not then
Speaker 1: you got to law school? G Like, you're not allowed.
Speaker 1: I'm so frustrating right now. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, it
Speaker 1: is frustrating. Yeah, but you know what's not frustrating the
Speaker 1: products and services that support this podcast because they very
Speaker 1: few of whom are running for judge ships. Although never
Speaker 1: actually some did you just say that the products and
Speaker 1: services aren't frustrating? None of them, not a single one.
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, Some of those dudes be seeping in.
Speaker 1: I don't know what our filters be doing, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying. But I will say it's a lot
Speaker 1: of y'all because y'all be showing up. Boy. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what what should be the Washington State Highway Patrol again?
Speaker 1: How did that happen? How did that happen? It's weird
Speaker 1: too that they would, like us, who becomes a cop
Speaker 1: in Washington because of a podcast? At It's like when
Speaker 1: Coke Industries was like who the fuck? Like what what
Speaker 1: motherfucker listens to a podcast and goes, well, that's where
Speaker 1: I'm giving my oil refining business. Is our demographic? Who
Speaker 1: do we want to move to? Ohio? Yeah, it's very
Speaker 1: funny people that. Yeah, so here's some ads. Ah, we're back.
Speaker 1: So one of Judge Ciavarella's opponents in that election, Thomas Commetta,
Speaker 1: later like he brings up that, like this ad is
Speaker 1: a breach of judicial ethics. Um, and Committa says pretty sensibly,
Speaker 1: how can you trust someone who runs for judge and
Speaker 1: breaks the law as a candidate to like follow the
Speaker 1: law while they're a judge? Right exactly now? Our boy
Speaker 1: responds that it's fine because all of the keywords in
Speaker 1: his ad were quote allowed by law, which is a
Speaker 1: very funny response to that. This guys, Yeah, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I hate this guy. You ruined my childhood. I'm telling
Speaker 1: whoever that is he ruined much out it. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: not even boy here. The real king of ruining childhoods
Speaker 1: this day, So Judge sie Verrella, however it's pronounced. I'm
Speaker 1: hearing some weird things in the Italian site that I
Speaker 1: just checked into double check this and I forgot. But people,
Speaker 1: here's a lot of names in this show, a lot
Speaker 1: of names. I even watched the documentary about this. I forget.
Speaker 1: I'm bad at it, Like you could deal with it.
Speaker 1: Go listen to fucking I don't know what's another podcast
Speaker 1: that is good at names. None of them are because
Speaker 1: they're at some sort of NPR name, Mr don't listen
Speaker 1: to NPR. They do this ship they're good at that.
Speaker 1: The thing is, so, the thing is he put a
Speaker 1: lot of innocent people intoil. Already know that he does.
Speaker 1: Oh that's yeah, that already yes. So, uh, that's Judge
Speaker 1: Sieverella's background, right, that's the kind of man he is.
Speaker 1: And we'll returned to him in a minute because he's
Speaker 1: our main character today. But we should talk about a
Speaker 1: friend of his, judge Michael Conahan, who's another part of
Speaker 1: this story. Hand Conahan. Yeah, Now, where Chivarella was a
Speaker 1: working class kid who clawed his way into the upper crust,
Speaker 1: Michael was born sipping mint julips at the country club.
Speaker 1: That may be a slight exaggeration, but his dad was
Speaker 1: town mayor for twelve years. He is, you know, like
Speaker 1: he's he's he's the mayor's son. Yeah, I hate this guy. Now.
Speaker 1: His dad also owned a funeral home and was a
Speaker 1: heinously abusive prick. While Conahan was begging for clemency spoilers
Speaker 1: years later, his lawyer said, quote, he comes from a
Speaker 1: family with a patriarch who drove his children to success
Speaker 1: and used money as a barometer of that success. He
Speaker 1: was taught the ends justified the means. Wait, did you
Speaker 1: say he was begging for clemency. Yeah, this is when
Speaker 1: he's being tried for the stuff that he does. So
Speaker 1: take this with a grain of salt, right. Um, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but here's the Times Tribune trying like reporting on what
Speaker 1: he claimed about his upbringing. Later, Mr Conahan was beaten
Speaker 1: mercilessly by his father when he was a teenager for
Speaker 1: simply forgetting to stoke the family furnace at the funeral home.
Speaker 1: His eildhood left him with deep insecurities and inadequacies that
Speaker 1: he repressed with alcohol. So he's he definitely I think
Speaker 1: has a drinking problem. Um, we'll talk about how much
Speaker 1: we believe any of that or how much we believe
Speaker 1: it even if does he says later, see, that's the
Speaker 1: that's the stuff that I'd be like, listen, man, you
Speaker 1: just you just can't trust white people because I'd be like,
Speaker 1: what that should do was build empathy that you went
Speaker 1: through that you should be like, you know what, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna be much more gracious to a lot of people.
Speaker 1: These people come from struggle. It's been hard. Hell, I
Speaker 1: was beat for doing things that wouldn't have I understand
Speaker 1: that you may make some bad decisions in your life.
Speaker 1: It's all good man, I'm gonna give you a second chance.
Speaker 1: But no, you decided to become na bro. Nah yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's one of those like I know a
Speaker 1: lot of people who got smacked around his kids. Most
Speaker 1: people I know did not do the things that this
Speaker 1: guy later don't even I was like, you don't even
Speaker 1: need to finish. I've been smacked around, Joe. I got
Speaker 1: I got spanked in my public school, dude. Yeah. Um. Now,
Speaker 1: while Conahan was still a child, there was an incident
Speaker 1: in his father's political career that what if His sisters
Speaker 1: would later note as relevant their dad awarded a business
Speaker 1: contract to a good friend, which led to charges that
Speaker 1: he'd committed an ethics violation. Quote the elder Mr Conahan
Speaker 1: couldn't understand why people considered it an ethical violation because
Speaker 1: he was awarding a contract to a friend because he
Speaker 1: thought that friend's work would benefit the community. She said.
Speaker 1: Their father never understood this. He couldn't see what the
Speaker 1: problem was. So in these two guys prop, you've got
Speaker 1: one working class kid with a chip on his shoulder
Speaker 1: who's willing to violate ethical guidelines to threaten children in
Speaker 1: order to get elected by hitching his start to a
Speaker 1: racist criminal justice trend. And then you've got the insecure
Speaker 1: and possibly traumatized rich kids son of a politician raised
Speaker 1: to believe that blatant crony ism and corruption is fine
Speaker 1: if your goals are noble. Right. So these are our
Speaker 1: main characters. To Bombo, real Combo, I appreciate you having
Speaker 1: me on this because I would have had thoughts had
Speaker 1: happen listening to this show, I'd be like, I got thoughts.
Speaker 1: So I'm very glad to be on this. Yeah. Oh boy.
Speaker 1: So Judge Sea Rolla was on the County Court of
Speaker 1: Common Pleas and Judge Conahan was the president judge, which
Speaker 1: gave him power of the purse. He gets to decide
Speaker 1: spending for a lot of the local justice system, right
Speaker 1: like he's a big part. He has a lot of
Speaker 1: power deciding where the money goes in terms of like
Speaker 1: incarceration and stuff for the county. The New York Times
Speaker 1: lays out what happens next quote It all started in
Speaker 1: June of two thousand with a simple business proposition. According
Speaker 1: to the judge's indictment and more than forty interviews with
Speaker 1: courtroom workers, authorities, and others, Robert J. Powell, a wealthy
Speaker 1: personal injury lawyer from Hazelton, Pennsylvania and longtime friend of
Speaker 1: Judge Conahan, wanted to know how he might get a
Speaker 1: contract to build a private detention center. Judge sever La
Speaker 1: thought he could help. The two men agreed to meet, and,
Speaker 1: according to prosecutors, somewhere in that conversation, a plan was
Speaker 1: hatched that courthouse workers and county officials would later describe
Speaker 1: as a freight train without breaks. First, Judge Sieverrella put
Speaker 1: Mr Powell in touch with a developer who also happened
Speaker 1: to be an old friend, Robert K. Miracle, to start
Speaker 1: work on finding a site. Then, in January two thousand two,
Speaker 1: the month Judge Conahan became President Judge, giving him control
Speaker 1: of the courthouse budget, he signed a secret deal with
Speaker 1: Mr Powell, agreeing that the court would pay one point
Speaker 1: three million in annual rent on top of tens of
Speaker 1: millions of dollars that the county and state would pay
Speaker 1: the house to delinquent juveniles. And by the end of
Speaker 1: that year, Judge Conahan had gotten rid of the competition
Speaker 1: by eliminating financing for the County Detention Center. So they
Speaker 1: make a deal with these people making a child prison,
Speaker 1: and then they closed the County child prison and agree
Speaker 1: not just to send kids there and give them the
Speaker 1: money that comes from sending kids there, but to give
Speaker 1: them a special one point three million dollar a year
Speaker 1: deal on top of all that money. Right, already pretty
Speaker 1: fucked up. It's already all bad, dude, like in in
Speaker 1: every well, okay, let me not say every in California. Um.
Speaker 1: When I was teaching, the idea, the theory was it
Speaker 1: takes about three thousand dollars a day to educate a child.
Speaker 1: So when you got into school, took role and you
Speaker 1: clicked Evans here click the school got three thousand dollars. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is why role was so important, and when
Speaker 1: you ditched, why it was so important, why you had
Speaker 1: truancy offers, officers, why the police pulled up if you
Speaker 1: wasn't at school, Because it's like, I make three grand
Speaker 1: every time you hear and every time you're not here
Speaker 1: with some sort of unexcused absence, I'm losing three thousand
Speaker 1: dollars per student. So I am incentivized just to make
Speaker 1: sure you're in a seat. I really don't care whether
Speaker 1: you learn anything or not. I just need to know
Speaker 1: you in the seat. So when you add that to prisons,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. How much does it cost to
Speaker 1: prison a kid, to you know, in prison a kid?
Speaker 1: Three thou dollars, five thousand dollars. You mean to tell
Speaker 1: me I can make how much? How much can I
Speaker 1: make presents? Okay, dope, Well then check this out. Here's
Speaker 1: the situation. How about I feed you stuff and you
Speaker 1: just throw me money back. God, it's fuck up, I mean,
Speaker 1: and it is. It is like it's a little more
Speaker 1: understandable in schools just because like, yes, school has fixed costs,
Speaker 1: budgets are usually tight and like that's a problem. It
Speaker 1: is a problem with what's happening here. They had a
Speaker 1: place to put these kids, purely about allowing a couple
Speaker 1: of dudes to profit, to profit off of incarcerating children.
Speaker 1: And this was a really obvious scheme too. Many of
Speaker 1: their colleagues saw what was going on, at least the
Speaker 1: surface parts of it, and complained. Judge Chester or Rowski
Speaker 1: sent a letter to the county commissioners complaining about the
Speaker 1: increase in detention costs. He was transferred by Conahan to
Speaker 1: another court a couple of days later, because again Conahan's
Speaker 1: the president judge. So this other judge complains and he's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're you got a different job now, man. Uh Morowski
Speaker 1: later told interviewers, quote, they were unstoppable. I knew something
Speaker 1: was wrong, but they silenced all dissent. And again he
Speaker 1: doesn't know everything that that we uh would know later.
Speaker 1: He just knows that like something shady is going on
Speaker 1: and complains about like the detention center. Um, so there's
Speaker 1: a lawsuit over this. The county controller, Steve Flood, leaked
Speaker 1: a state audit which showed that the state had analyzed
Speaker 1: the deal to lease the center as a bad one.
Speaker 1: So Steve Flood leaks that like, hey, the States said that,
Speaker 1: like there's no good reason to do this. This is
Speaker 1: just like seems to kind of be a grift. Now.
Speaker 1: The child prison in question, which was named p A Childcare,
Speaker 1: then sued Mr Flood for releasing trade secrets, while Judge
Speaker 1: Conahan sealed the lawsuit to stop any of the leaked
Speaker 1: documents from getting out to the public. One court worker
Speaker 1: later told The Times, everyone began to assume that the
Speaker 1: judges had some vested interest in the private center because
Speaker 1: they were pushing it so doggedly. And they did, of
Speaker 1: course they did. I was like, please get today, Like,
Speaker 1: of course they did. Why kids getting maximum sentences? We
Speaker 1: teenagers getting maximum sentences anyway, going oh boy, it's it's
Speaker 1: probly you already know how bad this is. But also
Speaker 1: it's gonna be worse in some ways than I think
Speaker 1: you might be. Ready. You probably are because I only
Speaker 1: know my own experience. I only know California. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I'll be interested to see if you're surprised
Speaker 1: by some of the things these kids go away for,
Speaker 1: because I don't know like you. I mean, they're like, okay,
Speaker 1: before you tell me the story I would tell you
Speaker 1: the story of a friend of mine who he was
Speaker 1: an upperclassman. Um was in I'll tell you two stories.
Speaker 1: One he was in the backseat. Basketball player in the
Speaker 1: back seat, asked for a ride home. You know your kids.
Speaker 1: You know some kids got a car, Like everybody have
Speaker 1: a car. His kids got a car. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: can I get a ride home. It's like, yeah, I
Speaker 1: get it right home. We're gonna make a stop right quick.
Speaker 1: So the dudes up front in the front made a
Speaker 1: stop right quick, broke into somebody's house, robbed some stuff
Speaker 1: getting there. He's in the back seat, sleep right. The
Speaker 1: kids tell even on the scant the kids were like, yo,
Speaker 1: he really had nothing to do with it. We was
Speaker 1: just giving the ride home. He's not really involved in all.
Speaker 1: That kid did five years and they told him. They
Speaker 1: told the judge, dude, we were just giving him a
Speaker 1: ride home. Like he had nothing to do with it.
Speaker 1: Still went to prison. Right. I have another friend who's
Speaker 1: uh uncle was hiding a syringe from his mom or
Speaker 1: my friends grandma because that was his uncle, right. So
Speaker 1: he was like, so it says to my friend's mom.
Speaker 1: So he's like, it was a syringe in his backpack
Speaker 1: had no idea. You have this thing that was called
Speaker 1: the gang injunctions in Los Angeles, which was like if
Speaker 1: you were if you were in more than if you
Speaker 1: were in a group of two or three more people,
Speaker 1: it's considered a gang. Right. So standard you're walking home
Speaker 1: from school with two of your friends, you're in a gang. Right.
Speaker 1: So the fool pulls them over, searches the backpack. You
Speaker 1: gotta crack syringe. Right. The judge listen on Mama's Robert
Speaker 1: the judge was like, this kid has no criminal record.
Speaker 1: I truly believe his story, but the law says I
Speaker 1: have a mandatory minimum of five years. This kid did
Speaker 1: five years for his uncle. Syringe came out of criminal
Speaker 1: guy came out of prison a criminal. Like he was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: now he's a criminal because like you just you just
Speaker 1: made you just threw him to the wolf. And there's
Speaker 1: a lot of documentation of that. Like that's what happens
Speaker 1: when you send kids these facilities. Um, all right, so
Speaker 1: well I will I will tell you some of the
Speaker 1: things these kids went away for, um and we'll we'll
Speaker 1: see how you feel about that. But Jesus Christ, um, Okay,
Speaker 1: So Paul the guy who is the realists or the
Speaker 1: lawyer who like helps start talking about this deal would
Speaker 1: later claim in court that after they get this thing
Speaker 1: under way, the two judges extorted him for bribes, and
Speaker 1: they basically said, we won't send more kids to your facility,
Speaker 1: and it will go out of business right if you don't,
Speaker 1: if you don't pay us directly. I think that's a lie.
Speaker 1: Obviously they got paid. I think he's lying about them
Speaker 1: extorting him. I I suspect this was the plan from
Speaker 1: the beginning, right. Um. There's a number of reasons this
Speaker 1: is unlikely. One thing is that, as the Times Tribune reports,
Speaker 1: which is a local paper, there were plenty of other
Speaker 1: kids from Pennsylvania to go to the to the go
Speaker 1: to the juvenile detention center. They wouldn't have gone out
Speaker 1: of business if these judges had stopped. So I think
Speaker 1: they just had I think they had a mutually beneficial arrangement.
Speaker 1: I don't think he got extorted at all. The reality
Speaker 1: seems to be that Powel and his business partner, the
Speaker 1: builder of the PA childcare center, Robert Miracle, agreed to
Speaker 1: bribe Conahan Judge Sieverrella in order to secure one point
Speaker 1: three million dollars a year and guaranteed rent plus additional
Speaker 1: funds because every time they get another youth prisoner, they
Speaker 1: get more money. Um. So in exchange for this, Judge
Speaker 1: Siavarella and Conahan get hundreds of thousands of dollars per
Speaker 1: year in total, about two point eight million dollars um
Speaker 1: and this is over I think like a four or
Speaker 1: five year period, so a lot of money. Now. Judge
Speaker 1: Sievrella was extremely eager to do his part, as this
Speaker 1: quote from The Wall Street Journal's coverage makes makes clear.
Speaker 1: Quote Judge Judge Mark Sieverrella Jr. Reportedly sent kids to
Speaker 1: the private detention centers when probation officers didn't think it
Speaker 1: was a good idea. He sent kids there when their
Speaker 1: crimes were nonviolent. He sent kids there when their crimes
Speaker 1: were insignificant. It was as though he was determined to
Speaker 1: keep those private prisons filled with children at all times.
Speaker 1: According to news stories, offense is the smallest Swiping a
Speaker 1: jar of nutmeg or throwing a piece of steak at
Speaker 1: an adult were enough to merit a trip to the
Speaker 1: Who's Goal. Over the years, Mark Sieverrella racked up a
Speaker 1: truly awesome score. He sent kids to detention instead of
Speaker 1: other options, at twice the state average. According to the
Speaker 1: New York Times, he tried a prodigious number of cases
Speaker 1: in which the accused child had no lawyer. Here, says
Speaker 1: the Times, the judges numbers were fully ten times the
Speaker 1: state average, and he did it fast, sometimes rendering a
Speaker 1: verdict in the neighborhood of a minute and a half
Speaker 1: to three minutes. What yeah, like, oh man, just instantly.
Speaker 1: Some people will say there were thirty second judgments where
Speaker 1: he just stands before him and he's just you're done, bro.
Speaker 1: So this is the stuff Mapasse would talk about. He
Speaker 1: would be like, we would know him among the other
Speaker 1: probation officers. They would already know, like this kid don't
Speaker 1: need to go to know, he don't need to go
Speaker 1: to Like he's fine, just like let me you know,
Speaker 1: I'll take care of you know what I'm saying. And
Speaker 1: you stand in front of judge. Soon as you see
Speaker 1: the judge, you'll be like, oh shit, here we go.
Speaker 1: He's not gonna listen to me, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So my father was like in his thirty years, he
Speaker 1: never he never he never recommended prison ever thirty years. Never.
Speaker 1: Reck Minty prison. It was always like i'll take him,
Speaker 1: I'll take him, I'll take him, I'll take him. Didn't matter.
Speaker 1: He knew he knew the judge when he walked in.
Speaker 1: He knew the judge. He would be like, the kid's
Speaker 1: going to jail. This kid's going to jail. He just
Speaker 1: knew as soon as he looked at the judge. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And it's one of those like yeah, it's it's it's
Speaker 1: just so fucked up that it that it could work
Speaker 1: that way, that it's ever been allowed to work that
Speaker 1: way that like it doesn't everyone can know it's wrong,
Speaker 1: including like fucking the parole officers and everyone. It's just
Speaker 1: this guy. It's one of those things like I know
Speaker 1: some people who have like not done time because they
Speaker 1: got a judge who was like get a great judge. Chill,
Speaker 1: Like the judge who was like was like this is bullshit,
Speaker 1: Like I have no desire. A friend of I just
Speaker 1: didn't go to prison. A couple of we were at
Speaker 1: all in court with him a couple of months ago, um,
Speaker 1: and it was because the judge was like, well this
Speaker 1: is this is like basically said the judge equipment like
Speaker 1: this is a stupid case. Yeah. So that does happen.
Speaker 1: But I mean, you know, a case like that was
Speaker 1: a good judge. She was like, yeah, you get them
Speaker 1: sometimes sometimes when they're bad, they can do a lot
Speaker 1: of damage. And that's like Sivarella does a lot of damage. Um.
Speaker 1: The Morning Call, which is another local paper in Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: does a good job of outlining some of the several
Speaker 1: of these cases. Um. And this is from After This
Speaker 1: All Broke is a story and a bunch of the
Speaker 1: judge's victims sue. So I'm gonna I'm gonna read a
Speaker 1: quote here of them, kind of summarizing some of the
Speaker 1: worst cases. Among them was Melanie Petrillo, who said she
Speaker 1: was twelve when she first went before sie Evarella in
Speaker 1: juvenile court in two thousand two. Si Evarella, she said,
Speaker 1: wouldn't let her speak in her own defense. On Monday,
Speaker 1: Petrilo testified that a visiting friend set a small fire
Speaker 1: in a garbage can outside her house. She went inside
Speaker 1: to get a glass of water, and police quickly arrived.
Speaker 1: She was arrested and later taken before sie Evarella, who
Speaker 1: sentenced her to a few months at the former Luzerne
Speaker 1: County Juvenile Detention Center. It was horrifying. Petrilo recalled, I
Speaker 1: had to put a blanket over my head so the
Speaker 1: cockroaches wouldn't all on me, like many of si Evarrella
Speaker 1: and Conahan's victims. This was the start of years of
Speaker 1: relentless contact between Petrilo, a child, and the criminal justice system.
Speaker 1: When Patrilo went away for the first time, it was
Speaker 1: to a county center, not to the place bribing the judge,
Speaker 1: but she was released under harsh probation terms, which of course,
Speaker 1: she violated, which brought her back in front of Judge Ciavarella,
Speaker 1: who then sent her to PA Childcare. Who was this
Speaker 1: place giving him kickbacks? Of course, Yeah, very old story.
Speaker 1: Petrilo claims this time behind bars led to her falling
Speaker 1: in with a bad crowd due to her reputation, which
Speaker 1: led to her getting a burglary charge. She winds up
Speaker 1: in front of Siavarla a third time, and she she
Speaker 1: doesn't get out of juvenile attention until she's an adult,
Speaker 1: like her whole childhood from age twelve on. Um, So
Speaker 1: the last six years of her childhood just gone as
Speaker 1: a result of this this chain of events. Now, the
Speaker 1: judge sent another girl, Elizabeth Laurent, to a pH to
Speaker 1: pH childcare for thirty two days after she was caught
Speaker 1: bringing opiate pills to school. She of course then had
Speaker 1: after ing out of PIA Childcare, she has a probation violation. Obviously,
Speaker 1: this happens with all of them, and she winds up
Speaker 1: in front of Judge si Evrella again. He sends her
Speaker 1: next to Camp Adams, which is a juvenile boot camp.
Speaker 1: I haven't seen any evidence this boot camp gave camp
Speaker 1: gave him evidence, gave him kickbacks. Like he doesn't always
Speaker 1: send kids to the places that are paying him. He
Speaker 1: really likes to send kids, incarcerated children, even if he's
Speaker 1: not getting money. He's just fine to take bribes for
Speaker 1: it too. Elizabeth Laurent, because she winds up getting sent
Speaker 1: to this boot camp, loses the college scholarship that she
Speaker 1: had won. Uh and obviously things go worse for her
Speaker 1: after this. She claims that she started hanging out with
Speaker 1: a quote unquote bad kid because the parents of her
Speaker 1: old friends wouldn't let her hang out with him anymore. Um,
Speaker 1: and like, yeah, things go you know. From there, She's
Speaker 1: in and out of different places. Her overwhelming memory of
Speaker 1: Sieverrella as he demolished her hopes and dreams again. She
Speaker 1: had a college scholarship set up when this happens was
Speaker 1: coldness and what she described as a nonchalant demeanor. That's whatever,
Speaker 1: like he's again very perfunctory for him. Um. Zachary Richards
Speaker 1: wound up in front of the judge because he stole
Speaker 1: a candy bar. Uh. He was after this, Yeah, at
Speaker 1: age fourteen, he steals a candy bar. Sieverrella sends him
Speaker 1: to juvenile attention um, and he's there for the rest
Speaker 1: of his childhood, from age fourteen to eighteen, mostly in
Speaker 1: pah childcare, the place giving the judge kickbacks. Um. His
Speaker 1: mom is adamant that Zachary never recovers from this, and
Speaker 1: she blames his suicide at age seven on Judge si Evarella.
Speaker 1: She is not the only mother making this claim. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna quote now from a write up by pin Live.
Speaker 1: Fonso's son was seventeen and an all star wrestler with
Speaker 1: a chance at a college scholarship when he landed in
Speaker 1: Sieverarella's courtroom on a minor drug paraphernalia charge. Though the
Speaker 1: teen Edward Kinseloski Edward Kinzikowski had no prior criminal record,
Speaker 1: he spent months at the private lockups in a wilderness
Speaker 1: camp and missed his senior year of high school. Kinzikowski
Speaker 1: emerged an angry, bitter, depressed young man. He committed suicide
Speaker 1: last June at the age of twenty three. He was
Speaker 1: just never the same. He couldn't recover. He wanted to
Speaker 1: go on with his life, but he was just hurt.
Speaker 1: He was affected so deeply, more than anyone knew. That's
Speaker 1: his his mom um. Yeah, it's bleak uh yeah, stuff
Speaker 1: like that. It just hits so close to home because
Speaker 1: I know kids who were either my friends or people
Speaker 1: like taught that, Like I know the like man, these
Speaker 1: are like gentle souls and then they're put in this
Speaker 1: situation over a motherfucking candy bar. Come on, man, Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: and then was crazy is like at least and Cally
Speaker 1: Camp is your best bet, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Because it's like there's a school there, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. It's not like East, Like, it's not like Central,
Speaker 1: which is like I mean, that's just that's or you
Speaker 1: get sent up to y A, which is California Youth
Speaker 1: Authority that's up in the north. That's prison. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's very saying because some states the wild ferness bootcamp,
Speaker 1: so the worst place you can go. It just kind
Speaker 1: of depends on, yeah, your system, because some of those
Speaker 1: places are nightmares. Yeah. Yeah, it's just everywhere's you know,
Speaker 1: different depending on how bad they're din. And obviously our
Speaker 1: camp is not wilderness in any way. It's just like
Speaker 1: it's there's there's one in Whittier, California, like just right
Speaker 1: off the corner of like, yeah, like the wilds of Whittier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just Los Pedrinos. It's like Whittier and freaking Marvista Drive.
Speaker 1: It's just like, oh hey, look there's a juvenile prison
Speaker 1: right there. Yeah. So one of Judged Ciavarella's favorite places
Speaker 1: to send kids when he couldn't send them to p
Speaker 1: a childcare was the Glen Mills School. Ryan Lamoreaux, for example,
Speaker 1: was sent there by Civarella for five years on a
Speaker 1: vandalism charge. Another fourteen year old was sent there for
Speaker 1: the crime of stealing loose change from unlocked cars to
Speaker 1: buy a bag of chips. So that's it. That's that's
Speaker 1: why that kid gets sent to the Glen Mills School,
Speaker 1: not the car. He ain't still at a car. No,
Speaker 1: didn't even break away, just took a change out of it.
Speaker 1: I just needed some quarters, which like, yeah, we can
Speaker 1: say isn't ideal behavior, but like I mean, find the kid.
Speaker 1: Let me let me tell you what this place is.
Speaker 1: Like I could quote from a Philadelphia Inquirer article for
Speaker 1: some context on the Glen Mill school where he sends
Speaker 1: a child for stealing spare change. Another teenager was removed
Speaker 1: from Glenn Mills and sent to a state run facility
Speaker 1: in two thousand seventeen after counselors stepped on the boy's
Speaker 1: face and broke his jaw so severely it had to
Speaker 1: be wired shut. And last summer, two counselors were caught
Speaker 1: up using a Philadelphia teenager on surveillance video. One slammed
Speaker 1: him to the floor and choked him, then the other
Speaker 1: punched the seventeen year old in the face. Both were
Speaker 1: later arrested. So that's I feel like kind of ship
Speaker 1: that happens in Glenn Mills. I feel like you just said,
Speaker 1: stepped on his face. Yep, that's what you say, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because yeah, yeah, And these are two, these are a
Speaker 1: couple of cases, but like it happens so constantly that
Speaker 1: in two thousand, nineteen, Glenn Mills has its license revoked
Speaker 1: and the state removes all children from its custody. Now,
Speaker 1: Glenn Mills had been founded in eighteen twenty six. Um, so,
Speaker 1: judge Ceverrell as a monster. I'm sure this place has
Speaker 1: been about that bad for in their defense in the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred's, you could step on a kid's face. Yeah
Speaker 1: you could. It was almost mandatory. Yeah, um Now, And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things. And when you read articles
Speaker 1: about like the fallout from the cast the Cash for
Speaker 1: Kids scandal, there's a bunch of like comments from judges
Speaker 1: and other people in the criminal justice system being like,
Speaker 1: these men did tremendous damage to the criminals, to trust
Speaker 1: in the criminal justice system, to the sanctity of the courts,
Speaker 1: to the sanctity of justice. It's like, these guys are
Speaker 1: pieces of ship. But dude, yeah, like, don't don't try
Speaker 1: to don't try to bro like, come on now, we's no,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're bad, but we don't try to give
Speaker 1: me that ship man. Yeah, you're good. And the reality
Speaker 1: is that all of the horrible things we've talked about,
Speaker 1: he only got in trouble for because he took bribes
Speaker 1: to do them. If he had just done this because
Speaker 1: he was a piece of ship and he was willing
Speaker 1: to do he did a lot of it for without
Speaker 1: getting brought um. If he just hadn't taken the bribes,
Speaker 1: he never would have gotten for this ship. Um And
Speaker 1: in fact, the hellish sentences he's a he imposed on
Speaker 1: children for minor what you could only often loosely describe
Speaker 1: as crimes were lauded and celebrated by his community for years.
Speaker 1: In two thousand six, he was reelected for another ten
Speaker 1: year term. Inn pr reports quote. The community applauded him,
Speaker 1: schools applauded him, police applauded him. He would go into
Speaker 1: schools and he would warn kids, if you come before me,
Speaker 1: I will send you away. And so schools invited him
Speaker 1: year after year to come in and talk to them.
Speaker 1: So when a kid came before him and there was
Speaker 1: a school crime, this could be a kid getting into
Speaker 1: a fight, or in our case, we had a kid
Speaker 1: who did a fake MySpace page for the principal, he
Speaker 1: would say, do you remember me being in your school?
Speaker 1: And he would say, I wish I said, I would
Speaker 1: send you away, get him out of here. And that's
Speaker 1: what it happened. He says, a kid to a fucking
Speaker 1: child prison for making a fake MySpace page. Like an
Speaker 1: administrator at the school, Oh my god, yeah, like a
Speaker 1: fake MySpace page, he said, locks a kid up, he
Speaker 1: gives them a criminal record for a fake fucking MySpace page.
Speaker 1: So this is why. Look, let me listeners, this is
Speaker 1: why were during elections when we hear terms like, oh,
Speaker 1: he's going to be tough on crime, We're like, that's
Speaker 1: a dog whistle. This is what we're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like, that's what you mean by tough on crime. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like if the kid makes a my Space making fun
Speaker 1: of his principle, I'm tough on crime. Like all right, bro,
Speaker 1: that's what you mean by crime. Just blasting kids lives
Speaker 1: apart for no real reason. But you know who won't
Speaker 1: destroy the lives of children for no good reason. Can't
Speaker 1: say you can't say that because it could be a
Speaker 1: Washington State Washington State Highway patrol. I was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, man, I can pretty much guarantee and that
Speaker 1: high possibility. One time we had a little FBI could
Speaker 1: be the FBI, or it could be I mean even worse,
Speaker 1: it could be UM one of those the food box
Speaker 1: companies that uses their profits to hunt children for sports.
Speaker 1: One you really don't like. Um, I don't know which
Speaker 1: one I think you hate. Oh, they're the ones who
Speaker 1: have the the island where you can hunt, hunt, hunt
Speaker 1: kids for sport, right seriously in Ada that yeah, ah,
Speaker 1: we're back. Ah. Those are some good ads for um.
Speaker 1: Absolutely Now fifty prop of children who appeared before Judge
Speaker 1: c Evarella did so without a lawyer. He remanded an
Speaker 1: average of three hundred children per year into custody, which
Speaker 1: is nearly obviously one a day. When you factor in vacations,
Speaker 1: it probably is about one a day. In the years
Speaker 1: before he made the deal with p A Childcare, Cfarella
Speaker 1: had remanded about four percent of the juveniles in his
Speaker 1: to criminal custody. As soon as he starts getting paid,
Speaker 1: it goes to because this is very obvious. Some of
Speaker 1: the offenses that he locked kids up for included es
Speaker 1: stated making a face fake MySpace page. Other kids were
Speaker 1: jailed for stealing a four dollar jar of nutmeg or
Speaker 1: throwing a sandal at a parent. Right, yeah, why would
Speaker 1: you not laugh if you were a judge, You're like
Speaker 1: a sandal at the kid that the kids should have
Speaker 1: is the judge should throw a sandal at just throw
Speaker 1: a sandal at him. That is absurd. Also, uh Jen's ears.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you what my space is. My space
Speaker 1: was when the Internet was innocent, and it was one
Speaker 1: of the precursors to it was a social media page.
Speaker 1: That's when some guy named Tom tricked all of us
Speaker 1: into learning to learning how to come If Facebook, if
Speaker 1: imagine if Facebook hadn't destroyed civil society, that was. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's popular for a while. Some people found some good
Speaker 1: bands because of it, and the guy who found it
Speaker 1: got six hundred million dollars and disappeared. It is like
Speaker 1: it is not mired in any way in any of
Speaker 1: the never changed picture, never changed his profile picture, And
Speaker 1: so far there hasn't been any self indulgent documentaries, hasn't
Speaker 1: said shit. Just what proves he's the only one of
Speaker 1: them who's a reasonable person Because a reasonable person gets
Speaker 1: six million dollars and it disappears. Yeah, and I'm gone. Yeah. Um.
Speaker 1: Siavarella told one kid during sentencing to count the number
Speaker 1: of birds on the window sill outside the courtroom. He
Speaker 1: gave the boy one month and detention for each bird
Speaker 1: sitting outside the courtroom, Like that's the kind of shift
Speaker 1: he's doing because he's like it's sad fun for himself,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah because the kid I got a lawyer, Yeah,
Speaker 1: because getting out of what who do? Yeah, what's he
Speaker 1: gonna do? Complained to someone that yeah, yeah, a kid
Speaker 1: can't be like I feel like this, I feel like
Speaker 1: that's not legal. I feel like you can't do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah kid, yeah, maybe three dollars. In interviews during this period,
Speaker 1: Siavrella was very open about how severe he could be.
Speaker 1: He told one journalist quote, my experience has been if
Speaker 1: you bring a child and who broke the law and
Speaker 1: put him on probation, chances are he'll be back in
Speaker 1: the system in a short period of time. If a
Speaker 1: child believes the consequence will be anything other than placement,
Speaker 1: they don't care. I have to find consequences that will
Speaker 1: get their attention. Now, obviously, we know statistically that like
Speaker 1: the worst thing you can do if you want kids
Speaker 1: to not go on to go to prison is locked
Speaker 1: them up with their kids. Yeah, there's that has a
Speaker 1: massive correlation with them being locked up as adults. But whatever, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's that. Also. Also, let me throw in this thing
Speaker 1: about probation. Why kids go ac Because if you say
Speaker 1: part of your probation is you can have no interaction
Speaker 1: with anyone from your former life or anyone who's involved
Speaker 1: in any sort of criminal or gang activity. But if
Speaker 1: that person is your fucking brother, Like, where do you so?
Speaker 1: Do I need to move out? Like? What do you
Speaker 1: so if you catch me with my uncle who just
Speaker 1: sent me to go get some groceries, I violated probation.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm going back to prisoner, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So, like even the probation stuff like food's
Speaker 1: going back. It's like, that's so I have to move.
Speaker 1: What you're saying is if I go back home and
Speaker 1: and the probation officer pull up and I'm literally just
Speaker 1: sitting on my porch, you know what I'm saying, and
Speaker 1: the person who's sitting across street, who just checking the mail,
Speaker 1: just happens to be from the same hood I'm from.
Speaker 1: I broke my probation. I'm going back to prison. Yeah,
Speaker 1: It's yeah, It's like it's very difficult for to not
Speaker 1: wind up in that situation. It's yeah, yeah, And that's
Speaker 1: it's that's why I would suppose us to be um Now,
Speaker 1: Judge sever Will explained in an interview to another reporter, quote,
Speaker 1: school is a place for kids to go and learn.
Speaker 1: Two percent of kids at school should not ruin it
Speaker 1: for the other ninety percent, anyone who gets in the
Speaker 1: way of that, I don't have a problem sending them away.
Speaker 1: Which is I can't think of how many times I
Speaker 1: heard logic like this from like adults in my life
Speaker 1: when I was a kid, that like, well, you just
Speaker 1: got to get rid of those kids who are are
Speaker 1: disrupting everyone else, as opposed to like, well maybe you
Speaker 1: could figure out what's going on in different Well you're
Speaker 1: the red Mustang to take care of them or whatever.
Speaker 1: But no, that's not you're about the red Mustang. No,
Speaker 1: that's a similar to like the broken window theory. It's
Speaker 1: like the red Mustang is like, well, if any of
Speaker 1: us are speeding on the road and you're driving a Prius,
Speaker 1: like nobody notices, but if you're speeding and you're a
Speaker 1: red Mustang and everybody's gonna catch you speeding. So that
Speaker 1: kid who always got them outbursts, who always got well,
Speaker 1: you're a red Mustang, man, Like, everybody's gonna see what
Speaker 1: you're doing. So like if you so you're to them,
Speaker 1: and if airbody sees it, everybody sees you speed, and
Speaker 1: then all little priuss think that they can speed. So
Speaker 1: then that's how they du these kids. Man. It's yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: almost punched. An administrator was making that analysis once. I
Speaker 1: was like, Yo, I'm you're looking at me like I'm
Speaker 1: twenty three years old as when I first started teaching.
Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm twenty three, So I'm looking at you
Speaker 1: like you're talking about me, like I'm that kid, Like
Speaker 1: what the now, I'm good, I can't work here. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's awesome. I mean because because they're
Speaker 1: not thinking about it as like I'm going I I
Speaker 1: think we should be destroying the lives of children and
Speaker 1: continning them to a life of what, in many cases
Speaker 1: is very close to slavery. They're thinking like, well, this
Speaker 1: is it's tough love. This is how it's the same
Speaker 1: attitude towards like, well, yeah, sometimes you gotta smack a
Speaker 1: kid around, you know, sometimes you've got to, like you
Speaker 1: have to, you have to be harsh with children, otherwise
Speaker 1: they'll they'll grow into two monsters. Yeah, which that's analysis
Speaker 1: than we could do. Yeah, Yeah. I even told a
Speaker 1: kid who came out of Julvie that ended up in
Speaker 1: my class. I told him that theory. But I told
Speaker 1: him in the theory in the sense that, like, these
Speaker 1: people are gunning for you, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, like, stay close, Homi, Like just in
Speaker 1: the sense of like I'm trying to like I'm trying
Speaker 1: to protect you from this, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like a matter of fact, like the Jevie you came
Speaker 1: from I used to work at before I worked here.
Speaker 1: So I'm like, I'm trying to tell you, bro, you
Speaker 1: don't you ain't trying to go back, right, They're gunning
Speaker 1: for you. This is the way they think of you.
Speaker 1: They think of you like this, bro. Man, I'm I'm
Speaker 1: I'm so read more. Yeah, yeah, um so the Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's pretty bad. This is a pretty bad
Speaker 1: scheme that these guys have. And again, it would have
Speaker 1: been perfectly legal if they hadn't been taking bribes. Nothing
Speaker 1: about these horrible you see in all the coverage, these
Speaker 1: like horrible cases that I've just related to you, They
Speaker 1: go to the tail about them, but they really note
Speaker 1: that like and it would have been fine if they
Speaker 1: hadn't taken kick. Those aren't crying, Yeah, crimes. You can
Speaker 1: be sad the children as you want as a judge,
Speaker 1: it's fine. The scheme fell apart because in two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: the parent of a child being railroaded by the judge
Speaker 1: placed a call to the Juvenile Law Center of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Uh and these people rule. They started to investigate and
Speaker 1: found that kids regularly appeared in front of the judge
Speaker 1: without any lawyer of their own. And again, this is
Speaker 1: something he gets in trouble for. It's something you can say,
Speaker 1: like he doesn't have a legal right to do, but
Speaker 1: he had done stuff like the campaign add that he
Speaker 1: couldn't technically do. They've not been trouble for this if
Speaker 1: it hadn't have been for the bribes. I don't think.
Speaker 1: I think it's really unlikely. Um, they noted. So these
Speaker 1: the Juvenile Law Center looks into him, and they noticed
Speaker 1: that he's got this tendency. Kids are showing up without
Speaker 1: a lawyer, and he's got a tendency to very quickly
Speaker 1: make declare children guilty and take them away from their parents.
Speaker 1: So they petition the State Supreme Court in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight to vacate these judgments, and the court denies them.
Speaker 1: So again, if it hadn't have been for the bribery,
Speaker 1: the court like already proved, if it hadn't been for
Speaker 1: the bribery, he probably would have been fine. Fine. The
Speaker 1: thing that destroys him is that in two thousand six,
Speaker 1: so two years before the Juvenile Law Center starts their
Speaker 1: investigation and makes this petition, the FBI gets a tip
Speaker 1: about the fact that he's being bribed from somebody who
Speaker 1: works in and around him. Right, finally, one of these
Speaker 1: fucking people because everyone knows what's more or less what's happening.
Speaker 1: They don't know for a fact about the bribe. But
Speaker 1: like he buys a yacht. He and Judge Conahan have
Speaker 1: these mansions next to each other. They've got like, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like living judges. Don't aren't poor people? Right, Like
Speaker 1: you're taking care of but like they're living out of
Speaker 1: their means walking here with a role got the role
Speaker 1: ons like up guys like yo, when you get that
Speaker 1: rolex you know, I mean works from overtime Like what yeah, bam, yeah,
Speaker 1: where you get that role judge overtime? Yeah? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: get judges there's noose things judge overtime. Gee, here's those
Speaker 1: zinc so he uh so, somebody um gives the FBI
Speaker 1: a tip um and they do an invest diigation. And
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, the same year that the
Speaker 1: State Supreme Court denies this petition, the FBI charges him
Speaker 1: um and they come out with like you know, they
Speaker 1: it's the same thing we've seen with the Capital. You
Speaker 1: get this big charging document that has all of the
Speaker 1: things the state is accusing them of. Um. They accuse
Speaker 1: c la and Conahan of quote, ordering juveniles to be
Speaker 1: sent to these facilities and which judges had a financial
Speaker 1: interest even when juvenile probation officers did not recommend placement. Now,
Speaker 1: a flurry of press coverage and investigations followed. Here's the
Speaker 1: Juvenile Justice Center quote. The scope of the violations of
Speaker 1: the children's rights in Luzerne County turned out to be
Speaker 1: more egregious than anyone could have imagined. From two thousand
Speaker 1: three to two thousand eight, the Luzerne County judicial corruption
Speaker 1: scandal altered the lives of more than twenty five hundred
Speaker 1: children and involved more than six thousand cases. Over fifty
Speaker 1: percent of the children who appeared before Crella lacked legal representation.
Speaker 1: Sixty percent of these children were removed from their homes.
Speaker 1: Many of them were sent to one or both of
Speaker 1: the two facilities the center of the corruption scandal, believed
Speaker 1: to be the largest judicial corruption scandal in our history.
Speaker 1: This is like a lot of lives that these guys
Speaker 1: just nuke. I mean, and and those numbers are pretty stark.
Speaker 1: So Judge Conahan, Uh, the guy who says his dad
Speaker 1: beat him and you know, is an alcoholic. As soon
Speaker 1: as the the FBI starts gunning for them and there's
Speaker 1: charging documents, he is smarter than his partner. He's like, yep,
Speaker 1: I did it. You know what, you don't have to
Speaker 1: take me to court. I plead guilty, right, which saves
Speaker 1: the government a lot of money. And as a general rule,
Speaker 1: that's part of why if you plead. And this is
Speaker 1: problematic too because oftentimes they use this to like funk
Speaker 1: people over and like give people charges that maybe they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have if they went to court. But you kind
Speaker 1: of take well, better to take a guarantee, maybe go
Speaker 1: away for ten years. If this actually goes to write
Speaker 1: in this case, it's fine. Um, he's he's absolutely guilty.
Speaker 1: He pleads guilty, he gets like eleven years. Robert Miracle, um,
Speaker 1: who's the guy who's the builder, gets like gets like
Speaker 1: a year or so, so does Robert Powell. So everyone
Speaker 1: involved pleads guilty and goes away except for Judge ci Evarella,
Speaker 1: who decides he's not gonna plead guilty. He denies he
Speaker 1: did anything wrong, and he demands to take it to
Speaker 1: trial and fight his charges. And he's the one that
Speaker 1: he's the one that like came from the struggle. He's
Speaker 1: the trigger man. Yeah, and he's he's the guy who
Speaker 1: grew up poor too. Okay, this is all adding up
Speaker 1: because like, if you know you call for money, you
Speaker 1: know how to play the game you like. Listen, dude,
Speaker 1: Yeah I'm guilty. Also, as a side note, for anybody
Speaker 1: who's in any sort of like romantic relationships, take the
Speaker 1: advice at a rich dude, just take the L. Listen
Speaker 1: when you if you wrong, you know you're wrong, just
Speaker 1: take the L. You know a baby, love baby, my bad.
Speaker 1: You are right. Comprehensively good advice. It is comprehensively good advice.
Speaker 1: The L. Just take the L. Guys, So Judge c
Speaker 1: Evererella does not do this, Um, and he makes it
Speaker 1: very public. He's he's constantly while his trial is going on,
Speaker 1: he's up in front of the press as often as possible.
Speaker 1: He defends himself by saying this to journalists about the
Speaker 1: bribes that he took. This was a finder's fee. We
Speaker 1: needed this center built. I was always yelling at kids
Speaker 1: because that's what they needed, because parents didn't know it
Speaker 1: to be parents and so forth. So what's the big
Speaker 1: deal now, I mean, everybody was celebrating me all these years,
Speaker 1: so now they're not happy with me anymore, just because
Speaker 1: I took this money finders fee. This was a finder's fee.
Speaker 1: Fan this commission, y'all talking about bribes. It was a
Speaker 1: finder's fee, y'all talking about how dangerous the streets of
Speaker 1: Philadelphia are. I don't clean these streets, and now you've
Speaker 1: got a problem making a little money off it. Dang,
Speaker 1: it's very funny. So he gets convicted UM sentence to
Speaker 1: like twenty eight years in prison. Now Conahan also gets
Speaker 1: like eleven years or something like that, a pretty significant
Speaker 1: sentence UM. But after he's in prison a few years,
Speaker 1: COVID nineteen hit. These guys get like convicted and like
Speaker 1: two eight nine UM COVID nineteen hits you know, a
Speaker 1: decade or so later and con Hand gets compassionate leave
Speaker 1: to go live with his wife under house arrest. Right,
Speaker 1: So he's like he's in a back in his mansion
Speaker 1: with his wife. He does his time, but like a
Speaker 1: little early UM, Judge c Evarella is still in incarcerated UM,
Speaker 1: and he's he's appealed constantly. He continues to protest his
Speaker 1: conviction sentence, and he's asked, he asks to be set
Speaker 1: free as a result of COVID. And I want to
Speaker 1: quote from an article in The Times Leader about his
Speaker 1: judge's response to him asking to get out early. Chief
Speaker 1: US District Judge Christopher C. Connor acknowledged that these are
Speaker 1: compelling reasons for compassionate release, but still denied it, saying
Speaker 1: that Sieverrella continues to fail to acknowledge the seriousness of
Speaker 1: his conduct, while he now concedes his honest services mail
Speaker 1: fraud and tax fraud charges are serious crimes and are
Speaker 1: not to be taken lightly, Connor writes in his decision,
Speaker 1: he persists in downplaying the overall criminal scheme and his
Speaker 1: role within it. Connor goes on to say that the
Speaker 1: primary need for Sieverrella's lengthy prison sentence is so he
Speaker 1: can reflect on the seriousness of the crime and to
Speaker 1: promote respect for the law, something which Connor suggests has
Speaker 1: not happened. So I don't know, judges like you still
Speaker 1: don't get it. Yeah, think about that however you want,
Speaker 1: right not, But but I'm glad he's punished for it.
Speaker 1: The boy. The boy got to go home with the
Speaker 1: ankle bracelet. The other homy that tried to fight is like,
Speaker 1: no ni yaka sit in there day, yeah, and kind
Speaker 1: of handles some time, and it's like you an't think
Speaker 1: about him getting led out early however you want. Severel
Speaker 1: is the one who is doing the direct rm um,
Speaker 1: the most direct arm at least they both are doing
Speaker 1: direct harm. Siever was the what kind of sentencing the kids?
Speaker 1: You know, what kind of prison is that? Do you know?
Speaker 1: Like what kind of prison they're in? I think it's
Speaker 1: gonna be a federal prison, right, because yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: federal prison. It's it's probably a nicer federal prison. I
Speaker 1: would That's what I was going to say. I was like, yes,
Speaker 1: it's not the worst of them, but I don't know,
Speaker 1: can't put no judge and you know, like g pop.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, be careful with that guy
Speaker 1: so he doesn't get you know, murdered. Yeah, he ain't
Speaker 1: doing not of time. He goes that time going done
Speaker 1: real quick. But a judge and there with general population
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, um but yeah that's the cash for kids scandal.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, dude. Good stuff. Uh triggered, reminded of
Speaker 1: a lot of things and bad. I feel like to
Speaker 1: describe this is the type of stuff that like I
Speaker 1: I find so like, how do I say this refreshing
Speaker 1: in the sense that like it's telling the rest of
Speaker 1: the world like, see, we're not crazy. I'm not making
Speaker 1: this stuff up when we say bigger. It's like I
Speaker 1: don't have two hours to explain to you that the
Speaker 1: system is broken or that it's corrupt and just well,
Speaker 1: if you were not guilty, then you have nothing to
Speaker 1: worry about, like to explain why that's the dumbest shit
Speaker 1: I've ever heard. It's like, listen, this is what I'm
Speaker 1: trying to tell you, Like fools get sent to jail
Speaker 1: on dumb shit because there's money to be made, is
Speaker 1: what I'm trying to say. You know what I'm saying
Speaker 1: and it's like this they got in trouble because it
Speaker 1: was obvious other judges make money doing this ship. They
Speaker 1: just don't take a direct payment from a dude because
Speaker 1: that's stupid. Because they're smarter, they get consulting fees, they
Speaker 1: get like side jobs where they're like working for this
Speaker 1: company or giving advice or like helping to do Like
Speaker 1: there's ways everyone it's the same way with like Congressman,
Speaker 1: the dumb ones take a pile of cash for something.
Speaker 1: The smart ones quit and get a highly paid job
Speaker 1: as a consultant, right, Like there's yeah, there's so many
Speaker 1: other people profit from doing the same thing that these
Speaker 1: guys got caught because they were stupid as shit, and
Speaker 1: they still were able to people lives, you know, at
Speaker 1: least for a while. Hopefully as many of them as
Speaker 1: possible recovered, but you know, not all it. Obviously it's
Speaker 1: hard to come back, mamselves, right, Like, yeah, it's hard
Speaker 1: to come back, dude, It's hard hard to come back. Yeah, yeah, thanks, right,
Speaker 1: thanks for On Thursday, we're talking about the Texas criminal
Speaker 1: justice system. That's the bastard is the Texas juvenile Yeah,
Speaker 1: so check back in Thursday. Um, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: Go hug a cat. Yeah, what are we doing? Is
Speaker 1: it a live show, Sophie. Yeah, February seventeen, Foo February
Speaker 1: seventeen and the episode description you could click the link,
Speaker 1: but it's it's Momenthouse dot com slash behind the Bastards.
Speaker 1: It's the three of us doing a live stream show
Speaker 1: and you watch it wherever you want to. It'll be
Speaker 1: live for a little while too, So if you can't
Speaker 1: do six pm Pacific, you can do it on demand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: any other time. Yeah, that'll check it out. And uh
Speaker 1: oh yeah, I got a novel you can, Yeah, you do.
Speaker 1: You can google After the Revolution a k Press. If
Speaker 1: you preorder it out you get as signed copy. It
Speaker 1: will come out in May, so go go buy that.
Speaker 1: You get a book too, don't you? Mr prop I do, man,
Speaker 1: you can call me Ernest slimming Way. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about. Uh yeah, poetry book called Terraform Propy
Speaker 1: pop dot com. Come grab that book is poetry and
Speaker 1: short story. I think it's dope, Sophie. Gotta signed copy,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying? Good stuff? Yeah, check it
Speaker 1: out and go go check us back out on Thursday
Speaker 1: where it will be sad again. Bam