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Mundy officially moves in Sept. 24, while December is target date for Muroski.
WILKES-BARRE – Two Luzerne County judges are in the process of relocating to the county’s Penn Place building, in order to make courtrooms available for criminal matters and to ensure more proceedings get put through the judicial system.
Judge Hugh Mundy, who has begun to hold court proceedings at the Pennsylvania Boulevard building, said he will officially move into the building Sept. 24.
President Judge Chester Muroski said he will move in sometime in December, just a few weeks before his tenure ends and he assumes senior judge status.
Mundy said he was asked by the acting court administrator if he would object to going to Penn Place.
“The reason for the request was so they would have an additional criminal courtroom,” Mundy said. “My acceptance will allow me to try more civil cases.”
Mundy will also assume senior judge status after his term as judge ends on Dec. 31, 2010.
“I will be assuming some of the old duties in traditional Orphan’s Court,” Muroski said, adding that being in the same building as the county register of wills will make the process easier.
Muroski said he’d also like to take on guardianships as well as the mental health court, drug court and private adoptions, and added that Orphan’s Court eventually morphed into support, juvenile, delinquency, dependency and protection-from-abuse cases.
Muroski said he’d like to return Orphan’s Court to what it originally is supposed to do, as well as the specialty courts of guardianship, mental health court, etc.
“Basically, what I’m doing is going back to the old traditional Orphan’s Court,” Muroski said. “These are areas I think need to be litigated by a Luzerne County judge rather than one of the senior judges we have visiting here. Our citizens deserve to have decisions made by a Luzerne County jurist.”
Mundy said Penn Place was designed so that jury trials could be held there, and that is what he intends to do with civil cases.
Mundy said he will retain the functions he does now, such as motions hearings, guilty pleas and some criminal cases, but now, with his own courtroom, will be able to try more civil cases.
“I’m happy to be able to perform my duties at Penn Place,” Mundy said.
Mundy said he doesn’t foresee any scheduling problems with the two judges holding court at Penn Place, but may have to use the larger of the two courtrooms for jury selection and guilty pleas since the smaller courtroom cannot seat the number of people those proceedings often bring in.
Two newly elected judges in November will take over Mundy and Muroski’s courtrooms at the main courthouse, which has five courtrooms.
The project at Penn Place cost nearly $260,000 for the conversion, which left two courtrooms empty after district judges William Amesbury and Martin Kane relocated to space outside the Pennsylvania Boulevard building.