Click here to subscribe today or Login.
County worker Paul McGarry says he never saw a contract for county and PA Child Care.
SCRANTON – The contrast was pronounced. One witness had been a rising new political rocket turned to falling star; the other was a veteran of old school machine politics still on the public payroll.
Friday’s testimony at the trial of Mark Ciavarella began with former Luzerne County Prothonotary Jill Moran, who had been among the highest vote getters among all Luzerne County races when she won the post in 2001. Moran’s success flamed out when she was caught in the Ciavarella scandal. A law partner with Robert Powell, she had delivered cash from Powell to then-judge Michael Conahan.
Moran had begun testimony Thursday by recounting how she didn’t know what was in the first two sealed Fed Ex boxes she delivered. On Friday she said when Powell asked her to convey a third, he called her into his office and then to a windowless bathroom where he stuffed banded cash into the box while mumbling and cursing.
“He told me ‘this is the last one. If anyone asks you, this is the last one’,” Moran recalled.
Moran also testified that she was unaware that someone had also been writing checks from the law firm made out to her, then forging her endorsement signature. She said she had no knowledge of the checks until investigators showed them to her. Prosecutors say the checks were designed to mask cash being given to Ciavarella and Conahan as payments for what Powell has called extortion.
As a result of her entanglements in the corruption, Moran signed a consent agreement with the U.S. Attorney in 2009 saying she had been used unwittingly by others to “commit fraud” and promising cooperation in the investigation. The agreement required her to resign as prothonotary, and she fell almost completely out of the public eye.
Under cross examination by Ciavarella’s lead attorney, Al Flora, Moran admitted Powell was too imposing for her to stand up against. Flora has been trying to prove that Powell was a strong man unlikely to succumb to extortion. Moran also said she never talked to Ciavarella about the deliveries to Conahan.
At the other end of the political spectrum on the witness list was long-time Luzerne County Courthouse employee Paul McGarry. He was director of probation services and administrative services from 2000 to 2004.
McGarry testified that his department arranged contracts with licensed facilities for the placement of juveniles adjudicated delinquent, but that until investigators showed it to him, he never saw a 2002 agreement signed by Judge Michael Conahan guaranteeing the county would pay at least $1.3 million annually to the private, for profit PA Child Care juvenile detention center in Pittston Township. Powell was co-owner of the place, and prosecutors say he and developer Robert Mericle paid millions to Conahan and Ciavarella for actions on the bench benefiting the facility.
When McGarry said judges didn’t have the authority to approve such contracts, Flora objected that McGarry was giving an opinion. The prosecution withdrew the question, but U.S. District Judge Edwin Kosik reminded both sides that Powell had testified he never planned to hold the judge to the contract and that it was merely a way to secure funding for construction of PA Child Care.
McGarry also testified he was the one who relayed news from Conahan to the county commissioners that the courts would no longer send kids to the county-owned juvenile detention center. Under cross examination, McGarry described that facility as rodent and roach infested, with a leaky roof, bad plumbing, poor heat, and lacking medical facilities or recreation space other than a basket nailed to an outside wall “with a cage around it.”
“You agree the sole motivation for the closing of the county facility was for the best interests of the juveniles going there?” Flora asked. “That’s certainly what I believed,” McGarry replied.
U.S. Assistant Attorney William Houser then painted an emotionally charged picture of Conahan admitting he and Ciavarella were going to get nearly a million dollars for the construction of a new private detention facility, then asked if knowing that would have changed McGarry’s feelings about Conahan effectively closing the county facility.
McGarry seemed to struggle with the question, at one point saying “That’s a hypothetical that I just can’t comprehend.”