Luzerne County Judges

December 18, 2009

Plaintiffs in juvenile case seek to add to federal suit

The new claim would be that county’s top prosecutors did not adequately train staff.

By Terrie Morgan-Besecker tmorgan@timesleader.com
Law & Order Reporter
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SCRANTON – Attorneys representing juveniles harmed by the juvenile justice scandal are seeking to add a new count to a federal lawsuit based on testimony presented a hearing before the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice.

In a motion filed Thursday, attorneys for the Juvenile Law Center ask a judge to allow them to amend the lawsuit to add a claim that the county’s top prosecutors failed to adequately train their staff to handle juvenile cases.

The motion is based on testimony given by Luzerne District Attorney Jacqueline Musto Carroll and Judge David Lupas, who previously served as district attorney, during the Nov. 10 hearing of the Interbranch Commission on Juvenile Justice. The commission was formed in August to investigate failings within the county’s juvenile justice system.

According to the motion, Musto Carroll and Lupas testified that assistant district attorneys who appeared in juvenile court were given no specialized training regarding juvenile law and that they provided essentially no supervision of the prosecutors.

Under federal law, a plaintiff is not permitted to add additional claims to a lawsuit once it has been filed except under certain conditions. One of those conditions is that the information that is sought to be added was not known to the plaintiff when the suit was first filed.

The motion says the JLC was not aware prosecutors were not trained in juvenile law until the Musto Carroll and Lupas testified at the juvenile commission hearing.

The JLC represents hundreds of juveniles who allege they were wrongly incarcerated by former Luzerne County judge Mark Ciavarella. The county will have an opportunity to respond to the motion, which will be ruled upon by a judge at a later date.

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