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Judicial Conduct Board prosecutor said he will try to have the Luzerne County judge removed from bench.
By Terrie Morgan-Besecker [email protected]
Law & Order Reporter
WILKES-BARRE – An attorney with the state Judicial Conduct Board said he will seek to have Judge Ann Lokuta removed from the bench following the release Thursday of a scathing, 228-page ruling that concludes she violated numerous Canons of judicial ethics.
The opinion, issued by the state Court of Judicial Discipline, cites a total of nine violations of the Canons related to bringing disrepute to the judicial office and prejudice to the proper administration of justice.
The opinion is decidedly one-sided, adopting nearly in full all the allegations the conduct board lodged against Lokuta in November 2006.
The court flatly rejected Lokuta’s portrayal of herself as a maverick judge who was the victim of a wide-scale conspiracy to oust her because she dared challenge the “old boy’s network” in the courthouse. Instead, the court paints her as an out-of-control bully who used the power of her office to perpetrate more than a decade of abuse upon courthouse employees and others.
“The court’s ruling today is a victory for the people of Luzerne County who suffered for years from Judge Lokuta’s abominable behavior,” said Francis J. Puskas II, the conduct board’s deputy chief counsel, who prosecuted Lokuta. “It validates what our witnesses told the court about Judge Lokuta’s behavior and exposes the ill-advised, scorched-earth defense she presented in an attempt to paint our witnesses as liars and herself as the victim.”
Lokuta, reached as she left court Thursday afternoon, vowed to continue the battle to retain her seat on the bench she has held since 1992.
“I’m very disheartened and disappointed with the outcome. However, I will avail myself to every remedy in the legal process, and I intend to fight this with every fiber of my being,” she said. “This coal miner’s daughter is not finished yet.”
Lokuta’s attorney, Louis Sinatra, has 10 days to file objections to the report. A second hearing to determine the sanctions that will be imposed will then be held. Lokuta will remain on the bench until the sanctions ruling is made, Puskas said.
Puskas said the sanction can range from a public reprimand, to suspension, to removal from the bench. He said he intends to ask the court to oust Lokuta based on the seriousness of the violations.
“These particular violations are in and of themselves violations of the Pennsylvania constitution. They are quite serious. I think any less sanction than removal would depreciate the significance of that,” Puskas said.
The court’s decision comes 10 months after the conclusion of a several-week trial held in Harrisburg in September and December 2007, and January 2008. A three-member panel of the court, headed by attorney Richard Sprague of Philadelphia, heard the case. The ruling was issued by the full seven-member board.
At trial, Puskas presented 30 witnesses who provided often compelling testimony that detailed Lokuta’s often erratic behavior.
The board launched an investigation in April 2004 based on complaint lodged by Susan Weber, Lokuta’s former secretary.
Lokuta and her current tipstaff, Maureen Gushanas, testified those allegations were largely blown out of proportion. They maintained the witnesses were pressured into lying by former President Judge Michael Conahan.
In its opinion, the court said that theory was “to put it gently, far fetched.”
“We give no credence to respondents perception … that the 30 witnesses called by the board are so terrorized by, or at least beholden to, the president judge that each one decided to come to court, take the witness stand, swear an oath to tell the truth and then tell lie after lie after lie – all in order to ‘get’ Judge Lokuta,” the court said.
The court divided its opinion into 11 sections that examined Lokuta’s work habits, conduct in the courtroom and chambers, and her relationship with other judges and court offices.
That examination revealed “clear and convincing evidence” that conduct in Lokuta’s courtroom not only violated the judicial Canons, but also the “standard of common decency,” the court said.
“We will not belabor the point except to say, that reading the testimony in this case … one gets the picture of something out of a Lewis Carroll or Dickens (novel) rather than of the chambers of a judge of the court of common pleas,” the court said.
Among the key findings are that Lokuta:
• Routinely belittled, berated and badgered court staff and others who appeared before her. The abuse was so severe that some employees were so traumatized that they could no longer appear before her.
“In our view her behavior qualifies as scandalous; it certainly is such that brings the judicial office into disrepute,” the court said.
• Utilized court personnel to perform “hundreds” of hours of work conducting her personal business, including cleaning her home, packing items, caring for her ill mother and raking her yard.
The court said it found that abuse “repugnant” and an “affront to every judge and judicial employee of the commonwealth.”
“We dare say that the reasonable expectations of the public would include the expectation that a judge would not require her law clerk to spend her time raking the judge’s yard, bubble wrapping the judge’s things or scrubbing the judge’s floors,” the court wrote.
• Created a “war”-like atmosphere with other judges and county court offices, including showing extreme disrespect and insubordination to the president judge.
• Was habitually late for hearings and intentionally delayed the start of proceedings while she chatted with people in her chambers.
• Openly acknowledged a personal bias against certain attorneys, then issued rulings that were detrimental to their clients’ cases.
• Falsely accused deputy court administrator P.J. Adonizio of physically and verbally assaulting her during an altercation in the courthouse in June 2004.
The court was particularly critical of Lokuta for the Adonizio incident.
Lokuta alleged an irate Adonizio grabbed Gushanas by the arm and screamed uncontrollably at her and Lokuta after Gushanas told him Lokuta wanted to see him.
Adonizio maintained he never touched Gushanas, and that it was she who became irate after he calmly explained he could not meet with Lokuta because he had to accompany his wife to a doctor’s appointment.
Citing the testimony of four people who witnessed the incident, the court determined that Lokuta and Gushanas lied. Worse yet, the court said, Lokuta then filed a false report with Judge Conahan, demanding that Adonizio be disciplined.
“We find (Lokuta’s) report to Judge Conahan to be singularly dishonorable, exhibiting as it does an extraordinary level of malice,” the court said. “Certainly the expectations of the public would include the expectation that a judicial officer would not deliberately make false charges of serious misconduct against a man whose only offense was to place more urgency on a visit to his wife’s oncologist than on an immediate and impromptu meeting with the respondent.”
The court also rejected several procedural, legal challenges Lokuta filed. One of those challenges alleged the board had failed to issue a ruling on her case within the mandated time frame.
The court found the delay was caused in part by Lokuta. The court noted the conduct board spent six months trying to get Lokuta to agree to a psychiatric evaluation. She also fought its attempts to question her following the filing of Weber’s complaint.
Staff writer Steve Mocarsky contributed to this report.
