Pa. court to save youths' records so they can sue

The state Supreme Court will preserve the records of as many as 6,500 juveniles who were adjudicated by a corrupt Luzerne County juvenile judge, it said in a letter to a federal judge.

Until July 22, the state's highest court had argued for the destruction of many of the records.

It said wiping out the tainted cases would allow juveniles to move forward with their lives, and that no record would truly be expunged as long as it existed somewhere.

Attorneys for the juveniles argued that destroying the records would undermine their clients' rights to pursue a civil action - as well as erase important historic evidence of one of the nation's most troubling cases of judicial misconduct.

Former Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and another former Luzerne County judge, Michael T. Conahan, both pleaded guilty in February to taking $2.6 million in payments to secure a county contract for two juvenile facilities, PA Child Care L.L.C. and Western PA Child Care L.L.C. In exchange, they would guarantee millions of dollars in revenue to the two detention centers.

"For the public, we will know what happened in front of Ciavarella, and this is a paramount theme to all of this," said Marsha Levick, legal director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia.

The law center represents many of the juveniles and filed the motion seeking to preserve the records.

The U.S. district judge handling the lawsuits, A. Richard Caputo, heard those arguments last week and has yet to rule on the case.

The state Supreme Court had no comment on the letter, and has not issued a formal order.

The change of heart by the high court is the latest in a series of surprising moves in the case over the last week.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Edwin M. Kosik, the judge handling the criminal case against the two former judges, said the pair had not owned up to their crimes and rejected a plea deal that called for each to serve 87 months in prison.

That means the case could go to trial.

Ciavarella, Kosik said, has taken to making public comments that there was no "quid pro quo" and that he never sentenced youths to the centers in exchange for money. Kosik called those denials "self-serving" and "abundantly contradicted" by the evidence.

After the former judges pleaded guilty, the state Supreme Court assigned a special master to sort through the cases. Earlier this year, Senior Judge Arthur Grim ordered the expungement of hundreds of the most egregious cases.

But lawyers for the juveniles became concerned when they discovered that once those records were expunged, they would be destroyed. They asked the court to preserve a sealed individual copy of every juvenile case Ciavarella heard.

The court said no. In July, it changed its mind and said it would honor requests by the 400 or so plaintiffs to preserve records.

The Juvenile Law Center asked the state to widen the ruling to include all juveniles - not just plaintiffs. The Supreme Court said no on May 21.

Last week the law center brought the issue to Caputo. But before the judge had a chance to rule, the Supreme Court changed its position again.

In a letter sent Friday, Pennsylvania Court Administrator Zygmont A. Pines said the state's highest court had asked him to advise Caputo that Grim had "been authorized to broaden the group of juveniles whose records are to be retained under seal."

The letter states that this would now include all juveniles who appeared before Ciavarella between 2003 and 2008.