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Lauren Stahl had no idea the book was coming.
The daughter of former Luzerne County judge Mark Ciavarella was shocked recently to learn that a former federal prosecutor, Lorna Graham, had penned an account of her father’s prosecution.
In “Presumption of Guilt: How The Kids For Cash Scandal Trampled Justice,” Graham alleges that Ciavarella was “railroaded” by prosecutors who falsely accused him of taking money to jail kids.
“Dad’s attorney emailed me, and asked, ‘Have you heard of this book,” Stahl told the Times Leader. “I was kind of blown away.”
Graham doesn’t deny that Ciavarella committed crimes for which he deserved to be punished — neither does Stahl — but takes aim at her former colleagues for failing to produce evidence that Ciavarella took payments for incarcerating juveniles while the media seized on unproven allegations.
“I’m not trying to make Ciavarella into an angel,” Graham said in a telephone interview.
“Clearly he was a corrupt judge and he committed felonies and deserved to go to jail,” she added. “But he was denied the presumption of innocence.”
The case
Federal prosecutors charged Ciavarella and former county Judge Michael Conahan with participating in a $2.8 million kickback scheme that involved the construction of two, for-profit juvenile detention centers and the placement of youths in the facilities in Pittston Township and Butler County.
A plea deal initially signed by the pair would have seen them serve 87 months behind bars. It was later rejected by federal Judge Edwin Kosik.
Conahan pleaded guilty to racketeering and was sentenced to 17½ years in federal prison. Now 67, he is serving out his time at a facility in Miami, Fla., with a listed release date of Dec. 18, 2026.
Ciavarella, now 69, took his case to trial and lost. He was convicted in 2011, and is serving out a 28-year sentence, due to expire in 2035, at a facility in Kentucky.
A federal appeals court earlier this year affirmed a lower court ruling overturning three of the 12 charges Ciavarella was convicted on, for racketeering and money laundering conspiracy, paving the way for a new trial on those counts.
Kids for cash?
Graham worked in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Scranton but was not involved in prosecuting the Ciavarella case, and said she has never met the former judge.
After retirement in 2014, however, Graham found herself with nagging questions about the case, and what she believed was a lack of evidence for the widespread contention that Ciavarella took cash for sending youths to the centers — a quid pro quo, Latin for “something for something” — and “finding as fact allegations that were unproven.”
She read through documents and court transcripts for several years while working on the book, saying that as a former prosecutor, she was “shocked” as what she saw as a lack of evidence in the records.
“Prosecutors’ promises to prove those heinous accusations spawned relentless media coverage of the ‘kids for cash’ scandal, misguided official reactions, and mass hysteria,” Graham wrote.
That continued into the appeals process, she said Tuesday.
“What really killed me was the Third Circuit found as fact allegations that were unproven,” Graham added.
In particular, she cited allegations from the original charging documents that Ciavarella had pressured juveniles’ probation officers to recommend detention even though they wanted to recommend probation.
Graham contrasted that with testimony from former Luzerne County juvenile probation official Sandra Brulo indicating that there were no records indicating how often Ciavarella met with probation officers.
The author also takes local and national media to task for a lack of investigative reporting into how the trial was handled, damning them as “more intent on making a profit based on unproven scandalous allegations than investigating their veracity.”
Graham also found fault with the State Supreme Court’s decision to vacate the convictions of thousands of juveniles in the wake of the scandal.
The author said she has seen the “Kids for Cash” documentary which followed the cases, which she said “don’t take a definite stance” on the quid pro quo question, rather on whether Ciavarella’s zero-tolerance approach resulted in excessive sentences.
Graham said she informed her former employers about the book prior to its publication.
“I got nothing back,” she said.
A daughter’s reaction
Stahl said she told her father about the book, and that he finished reading it even more quickly than she did. She does not get to visit him often but speaks with him weekly, she said.
Both felt it validated many of the points they have long been making about the way prosecutors handled Ciavarella’s case, Stahl said.
Ciavarella has steadfastly maintained he never took money for sending kids to incarceration.
“I understand what my father did and didn’t do. I understand that what he did, he needs to be punished for,” Stahl said. “What (Graham) paints is the most accurate account of it I have seen.”
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