Luzerne County Judges

Former Luzerne County Judge Mark Ciavarella engaged in the “most egregious violation of trust given a judge” in his handling of juvenile cases, a Berks County judge said in testimony today before a commission investigating failings within the county’s juvenile system.

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Senior Judge Arthur E. Grim testifies during the public hearings of the Interbranch Commission of Juvenile Justice at the Best Western East Mountain Inn in Plains on Monday afternoon.

S.John Wilkin / The Times Leader

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Juvenile justice hearings

Whose testimony are you most interested to hear from this week's Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice hearings?

Sandra Brulo

Senior Judge Arthur Grim

Joseph Massa

Judge David Lupas

District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll

Basil Russin

John Johnson

Judge Arthur Grim, the special master appointed to review the cases, said Ciavarella’s  violation of juveniles’ rights went far beyond their denial to a right to counsel. Ciavarella also denied them the right to an impartial hearing as he frequently read probation reports regarding their alleged crimes before he held the hearing to determine whether or not they were guilty of the offense.

“It’s not only against the law and procedure, it is so obvious, on its face, wrong, that it blew my mind,” Grim told the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice.

Grim is among three witnesses scheduled to appear before the commission, which is holding a hearing today at the Best Western East Mountain Inn in Plains Township. The commission has been tasked with investigating what went wrong in Luzerne County and to issue recommendations to ensure it doesn’t happen again here or elsewhere.

Grim made several suggestions he believes will help ensure failings that occurred within the system are not repeated. They included opening more juvenile proceedings to the public, as long as safeguards are put in place to protect the identity of the juveniles and victims.

He also called upon police departments and schools to consider alternative resolutions to cases, short of taking them to court. Too often, Grim said, school officials were too quick to refer cases to court that might have been handled with less intrusive measures.

“It was apparent that many school officials supported Ciavarella’s ‘get tough’ policy without really giving thought to what it meant,” Grim said. “They would immediately pick up the phone and call police because they knew if they reported it and it got in front of a ‘get tough’ judge . . . the troublemaker would be out of their hair.”

Testimony at the hearing is scheduled to resume at around 3:20 p.m. with Joseph Massa, chief counsel for the Pennsylvania Judicial Conduct Board. A third witness, Sandra Brulo, a former juvenile probation department official, is scheduled to testify at 7 p.m.

The hearing is open to the public.

For further updates check back with www.timesleader.com