Michael Conahan
| Michael T. Conahan | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
April 21, 1952 Hazleton, Pennsylvania |
| Occupation | Judge |
| Criminal charge | Money laundering, fraud and racketeering |
| Criminal penalty | 17.5 years in prison Over $900,000 in fines and restitution |
| Criminal status | Federal inmate #15009-067 Federal Correctional Institution, Coleman Low |
Michael T. Conahan is a convicted felon who received a law degree from Temple University. He served from 1994-2007 as Judge on the Court of Common Pleas. In January 2008 Conahan became president judge of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania.
He is currently serving seventeen and a half years in prison for his part in the so-called Kids for Cash scandal.
Along with his fellow Luzerne county Judge Mark Ciavarella, Conahan became infamous as a result of the notorious Pennsylvania "Kids for cash" scandal in 2008.
This was not his first brush with questions about his judicial conduct. Ronald Belletiere from Florida was sentenced in the 1990s to 4½ years in federal prison in connection with a Hazleton cocaine-trafficking ring. A witness in that case testified that in 1986, then-Magisterial District Judge Conahan called to tip him off that his drug connection was being investigated. Conahan allegedly referred the man to Belletiere as a safer source to obtain drugs. During a sidebar with a judge in that case, the prosecutor described Conahan as an "unindicted co-conspirator." That disclosure became public in 1994 eight months after Conahan was sworn in for his first term as a county judge. At a press conference he held to deny the allegation, he blamed the charges on "common criminals" looking for favorable treatment with prosecutors.
After becoming Luzerne county's president judge, Conahan used his budgetary discretion to stop funding the county public youth detention facility, agreeing to send juvenile defendants instead to a newly constructed, for-profit facility. He was subsequently accused of agreeing to generate at least $1.3 million per year in receivables that could be billed to taxpayers in exchange for receiving kickbacks from the facility owner. After indictment, he originally pleaded guilty to charges, but later withdrew his plea. His colleague Mark Ciavarella was also indicted on charges of money laundering, fraud and racketeering.
The Pennsylvania state Judicial Conduct Board had received four complaints about Conahan between 2004 and 2008, but later admitted it failed to investigate any of them, nor had it sought documentation regarding the cases involved. In 2006, the FBI was tipped off about Conahan and nepotism in the county courts. An additional investigation into improper sentencing in Luzerne County began early in 2007 resulting from requests for help from several youths that were received by the Philadelphia-based Juvenile Law Center. The Center's attorneys determined that several hundred cases had been tried without the teenaged defendants having received adequate assistance of counsel. In April 2008, the Center petitioned the Pennsylvania Supreme Court seeking relief for alleged violation of the civil rights of those young defendants. The court initially denied the application for relief, then in January 2009 after charges of corruption against the both judges surfaced, it reconsidered in favor of the appellants.
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