Behind the Bastards - Part One: The Cash for Kids Scandal

Episode Date: January 25, 2022

Robert is joined by Propaganda to discuss The Cash for Kids Scandal.FOOTNOTES: https://www.npr.org/2014/03/08/287286626/kids-for-cash-captures-a-juvenile-justice-scandal-from-two-sides https://medium.com/lantern-theater-company-searchlight/the-kids-for-cash-scandal-d28ad3ae60b https://www.mcall.com/news/breaking/mc-pa-kids-for-cash-hearing-20211026-2gh3amol5rgv7gqv3wzefuvcna-story.html https://www.inquirer.com/news/glen-mills-schools-license-closed-pa-abuse-investigation-dhs-20190408.html https://www.timesleader.com/top-stories/816416/ciavarella-denied-compassionate-release https://www.timesleader.com/news/747620/us-attorney-rejects-ciavarella-book-claims https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/aug/11/kids-for-cash-judge-pennsylvania https://web.archive.org/web/20160127144717/http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?r109:E09MR6-0027 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB123854010220075533 https://web.archive.org/web/20110224063902/http://articles.cnn.com/2009-02-23/justice/pennsylvania.corrupt.judges_1_detention-judges-number-of-juvenile-offenders/2?_s=PM%3ACRIME https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/28/us/28judges.html?_r=1 https://web.archive.org/web/20150208170455/http://archives.timesleader.com/2009_44/2009_08_23_What_precisely_did_2_judges_do__-news.html https://jjie.org/2010/03/22/getting-the-juvenile-justice-system-to-grow-up/ https://web.archive.org/web/20091214020749/http://citizensvoice.com/news/lokuta-says-conduct-board-kept-conahan-allegations-under-wraps-1.480057 https://news.yahoo.com/ciavarella-trial-where-now-005100734.html https://www.mcall.com/news/pennsylvania/mc-wire-pa-kids-for-cash-judge-wants-payment-from-coconspirators-inlaws-1106-20141106-story.html https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/news/at-sentencing-defense-cites-conahans-upbringing-for-ex-judges-role-in-scandal/article_39ecd457-a7bb-5d7d-8eca-30f75e89415c.html https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/news/lawyers-ciavarella-railroaded-adults-too/article_5f605d69-dc9c-5d29-b9c7-7c177848f38a.html https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/news/casual-ciavarella-galls-kids-families/article_6fe54754-15a3-55eb-86e1-889a9ce96b14.html https://www.thetimes-tribune.com/news/ciavarella-apologizes-then-rips-accusers-in-courtroom-soliloquy/article_72f8a3de-0f66-53bc-ac7c-1c61df2e47f4.html https://www.splcenter.org/news/2012/05/03/investigation-lawsuit-expose-barbaric-conditions-profit-youth-prison-mississippi https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/10/25/more-than-century-texas-youth-prisons-have-fostered-abuse/ https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/15/us/texas-juvenile-centers-investigation.htmlh https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/professor-says-allegations-of-abuse-are-nothing-new-in-texas-juvenile-justice-system/ Join us on 2/17 for a live digital experience of Behind the Bastards (plus Q&A) featuring Robert Evans, Propaganda, & Sophie Lichterman. If you can't make it, the show will be available for replay until 2/24!Tickets: https://www.momenthouse.com/behindthebastards Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What would you do if a secret cabal of the most powerful folks in the United States told you, hey, let's start a coup? Back in the 1930s, a Marine named Smedley Butler was all that stood between the U.S. and fascism. I'm Ben Bullitt. I'm Alex French. And I'm Smedley Butler. Join us for this sordid tale of ambition, treason, and what happens when evil tycoons have too much time on their hands. Listen to Let's Start a Coup on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you find your favorite shows. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated

two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What's sad? My all of you are about to be. I'm Robert Evans. This is behind the bastards podcast, bad people. Tell you all about them. My guest today, Mr. Jason Petty, aka Prop. What's up, man? Drop the government name and let's go. I'm out here. That's how much I care about you. There are two people in the world that call me Jason. It's my wife and a lady named

Jen Hapmaker. They're the only two people on earth that call me Jason. And Robert for summer. Jason, we can bleep your legal name. I'll talk to that. Don't worry about it. I ain't scared. All that stuff has been expunged. I was a minor, so you can't talk about it today. Oh, that is appropriate for today's topic because today we're talking about a couple of aspects of the juvenile justice system that I think we're all going to find super fun. Real good time. Okay, go ahead. No, no, no. How do you feel about kids? Well, I love kids. I got two of them. I love the juvenile system. I've been a part of it. It seems like it works pretty well. Yes. So there's a number of connections with this.

My father was a SDPO too for California, which is a deputy probation officer for the juvenile system in Los Angeles. He retired from it, you know, because it's like, like we said before, can't change the system from within side. It just doesn't work. So he kind of bailed out, but he at least was like, at least I could be an advocate for the time that I'm there. And when some of y'all may know that I used to, I was a teacher before I was doing music and poetry full time. And I started off at my first teaching job was at Central. What was the substitute position? But it was with all of the juvenile halls in California. So East Lake Correctional Facility, Camp Rocky, Camp Afaba. So my first teaching experience was all in the juvenile

juvenile systems. So like, I'm very connected to the story you about to talk right now. And again, I was in the system. Yeah. And it's, there's an anthropological theory I'm kind of fond of, which is the idea that like, essentially all civilization, and by that, I don't mean necessarily like skyscrapers and electric lights, which is the idea of like human beings organizing in groups to do things started because of the need to raise kids, because like, it is evolutionarily advantageous to have a big brain that allows you to make tools. But at a certain point, our brains got so big that you can't put, you can't like just come out with a brain that big, where you're going to kill the person giving birth to you, right? Like you can only give

birth to a brain so big. So we started, our kids started coming out younger and younger, and less and less capable of doing anything, right? Like if you're there at like the birthing of like a calf or a baby lamb or like a dog, yeah, they could just like, they're up and they're doing shit pretty quick. Yeah, pretty fucking quick in most cases. And like, by the time a human baby, you have like a puppy and a baby at the same time, by the time that human baby can like kind of waddle, that dog will more or less be able to like hunt. The dog's fine. Yes. Yeah, the dog's ready for the world. There's a whole premise in my book, Terraform, where I talk about the development of culture. And it's because we're the only species that aren't born with

everything we need to survive. We had to create language, we had to create, you know, covers and stuff like that. Exactly what that thing is. And one of the only things you like, you write in my zone right now, one of the only things that is universal in human civilization across every country and time was the idea of protecting our children. Yeah, I would say it's the most fundamental human thing in the world. Like I don't have kids. I don't ever want to have kids. Don't. But I still think like it's every adult's fucking responsibility if there's a, if you can protect a child to protect the child, like period, period. Like, and that's why the people we're talking about today are such fucking nightmares because they are human humans who have

like fundamentally decided, but what if we did the opposite, bro, for like money, bro, racism, and to get elected? I wish I could see my face right now because like I said, we got two different stories this week. For our first story today, prop, what do you heard about the kids for cash scandal? I was also a high school teacher. So yes, I've heard of this. Yeah, it's not great. No. So to, before we get into this, I think we need to talk a little bit about some relevant background. So violent crime in the United States almost quadrupled between 1960 and 1991. By 1995, serious crimes including homicide were all falling. So crime is by 95 starting to drop again. But right at around the time crime was beginning its fall that continued up until fairly

recently, 24 hour news in the internet really started to get going. And stories about violent crime and crimes directed against particularly white suburban people were hugely popular. You can make a lot of money in the gang bang, you know, right? Yeah. And crimes committed by teenagers against particularly that demographic, yes, we're like the easiest way to get fucking eyeballs on screen. Yes, I know. I am a child of war on drugs, the gang injunctions. I am a child of all this. Yes. Yeah. Now, the problem was discussed through obviously the news and fictional media. But it was also something that academics talked about. And in November of 1995, a political scientist named John DeLulio Jr. wrote an article for the weekly standard, which is a right wing

opinion magazine titled The Coming of the Super Predators. Oh, my God. This article was based. Yeah. Yeah. Y'all, this person ruined my childhood. Yeah. Because of the work he about to talk about. Go ahead. Yeah. He dropped a bomb on, I don't know, a few million kids childhoods conservatively. The article that he wrote was based primarily on data from boys in Philadelphia that showed that 6% of young like of minor male male minors in Philadelphia accounted for more than half of the serious crimes committed by male children in that city. Now, as you might have guessed, number one, there's a number of reasons for this. This is just Philadelphia. There's a lot going on here. It's maybe not the best thing to draw broad sweeping societal

conclusions from, especially in a vacuum. Yeah. And as you probably won't be surprised to hear, the article that DeLulio wrote was filled with very uncomfortable race related lines like this paragraph. While the trouble will be greatest in black inner city neighborhoods, other places are also certain to have burgeoning youth crime problems that will spill over into upscale central city districts, inner ring suburbs, and even the rural heartland. To underscore this point, Abraham recount, who's one of the people he's talking to, recounted a recent town hall meeting in a white working class section of the city that has fallen on hard times. They're becoming afraid of their own children. There were some big beefy guys there too. And they're asking me,

what am I going to do to control their children? So there's a lot going there, including the idea that like, well, crime in the inner city is obviously going to happen. It's a problem because it's might spill over into upscale areas in the suburbs, right? There's so much happening here. I'm trying to like, because I'm so like, even the timeframe, like I'm revealing my age here, but I'm at high school when this is happening. So like, I am who he's talking about. Yeah, you know, inner city black male, you know what I'm saying? So I'm like, and just little stuff would drop. And it's like, you see people like, I'm walking home from school, then my PE clothes, no less, you know, because I got, I got shipped out to a suburban high school, you know,

so like, it wasn't my, I was long story short, joint custody, yada, yada, right? So I went to the nicer high school. So walking home, I'm just like, stupid headphones on listening to Wu Tang, and like, watching the lady clutch her purse and cross the street, and just about like, you're nervous about situ and I'm like, dude, like, I'm, you see my nerd ass and PE clothes with my both straps on my backpack, like I'm really up. You're telling me I'm a problem. And the reason why I'm a problem is because this is the source material that us moving into your city, into this part of town is going to bring the problems that you talking about in this thing. Absolutely. Yeah, that's, that's exactly. And that, that kind of fear that's that specific

population sphere is what he's stoking with this. Yeah. And obviously the bulk of this article, there's that little study from Philadelphia that's, that, that is kind of the, the statistical nut for, for what he's writing here. But most of it's based on interviews with police officers and other individuals with a very obvious bias. One district attorney is cited in the article is saying about children. They kill or maim on impulse without any intelligible motive. And a police officer is quoted as saying, I never used to be scared. Now I say a quick Hail Mary every time I get a call at night involving juveniles. I pray I go home in one piece to my own kids. See, this simple, it's like all these times when we say like,

like, like fast forward to Tamir Rice and you're treating this 14 year old like a goddamn adult. It's this shit. It's like, like we not just keep like we're kids. Yeah. Kids like everybody else. I'm sorry. I'm so triggered right now. This is you totally pick the right thing. Bro. Yeah, it's, it's, it's not going to get less frustrating. Yes, I know. So in the article, these quotes are followed by quotes from a group of what who Dalulio describes as life term inmates in a prison in New Jersey. And Dalulio makes sure we know of these inmates that quote, many of them are black males from inner city Newark and Camden. And these guys, he quotes as being terrified of today's super predator children too. So he's being like,

look, even these black criminals in prison are scared of kids these days. Like it's, it's really a pretty horrific article. Yeah. Now, according to Wikipedia, Dalulio is a Democrat today. I don't know if that's true. I don't know much about his present life. It is important we be clear that he was wrong about everything all predicted in this article. His big prediction is that because of these super predators, juvenile crime would triple by 2010. But of course, by the time he wrote this article, juvenile crime had already been dropping for a couple of years. And by 2011, juvenile homicides had plunged by two thirds. So he's literally the opposite of, of what he says happens pretty much. And despite the fact that he was perfectly wrong about what's

pretty much the only noteworthy claim he makes in his career, Dalulio received two awards in 2010 for excellence in academics. Of course. Again, it doesn't matter. What matters is you gave people an excuse to be scared and do violence. That's all you got to do. That's all you got to do, man, folks. Yeah. Yo, it's what's, yeah, what's interesting about this moment is around. I'm gonna really show y'all some, some like actual politics was like around the end of the 90s. There was a call that came from really from jail that was like, y'all got to stop doing drive-bys. And it was basically because it was like, listen, dude, it's just, it's just not G. Like this is not, we're not spending our lifetime in prison

for y'all to just drive by somewhere and shoot them. So, so even like, even the violent crime kind of slowing down, that was like, we did that for ourselves. You know what I'm saying? Like, it wasn't, and granted, obviously, like the war on jugs and the gang injunctions and RICO and all this different stuff and the gang uptick. Like obviously, like, you're, of course, you're gonna drop, you're gonna drop crime if gentrification starts. Other stuff, the economy is expanding hugely and the internet gets created. I'm like, we got jobs. Number one, I'm like, well, we're adults now. We have jobs and there's other things to do happening around us. Yeah. You start to see the impact of the fact that they got lit at a fucking gasoline, you know, starting in like, what the

70s or the 80s. So like a bunch of shit happens. That's why crime drops by so much. But what's important is that Delulio is, again, perfectly wrong. Absolutely wrong. Yeah. Now, the, despite this fact, his work had a huge influence on how juvenile crime was perceived and it led to a massive change nationwide and how often children were tried and sentenced as adults. I want to quote now from an article in NBC News about this period because it makes a good point about some broader trends that Delulio's work fed into. So he's not obviously the beginning of this quote, just a few years before the news media had introduced the terms wilding and wolf pack to the national vocabulary to describe five teenagers, four black and one Hispanic who were convicted

and later exonerated of the rape of a woman in New York Central Park. That's this kind of animal savagery was already in the conversation said Kim Taylor Thompson, a law professor at New York University. The super predator language began a process of allowing us to suspend our feelings of empathy towards young people of color. And again, I might quibble about it that this began the process. This is another moment. Yeah. It escalates. I think it's fair to say that it does escalate. Absolutely. And more to the point, it leads to kind of some structural things that escalate how this is actually like built into the legal system. Now, it's probably worth noting before we move on that Delulio's mentor was a political scientist named James Q. Wilson.

Now, Mr. Wilson got famous for writing a 1985 book with the title Crime and Human Nature, which argued that criminality was caused by specific genetic factors. There it is. You will not again. Yeah. Yeah, you know, he's going around. He also got famous for chasing around Dennis the Menace. Yeah. Mr. Wilson. This is that Mr. Wilson. Yes. All right. Anyway, go on. He spends a lot of his book writing paragraphs like this, a central problem, perhaps the central problem in improving the relationship between white and black Americans is the difference in racial crime rates. No matter how innocent or guilty a stranger may be, he carries with him in public the burdens or benefits of his group identity. Now, I mean, facts, you know. Yeah. Yeah. The

fact that like, yes, people carry with them like the benefits of how their group, the group that they visually at least belong to is pursued by society. Sure. Yeah. But it's, yeah, it, there's a lot of kind of eugenicsy shit in this book. Yeah, he's talking about like certain populations are more prone for crime. And it definitely he definitely ignores a lot of important things like how economics feed into it and how certain historical trends there's obviously he's he's he's piece of shit. And it's not surprising that racists said racist shit. What is surprising is that both of these guys, these very right wing, very kind of white supremacist thinkers are backed not just by conservatives, but by supposedly liberal colleges. And what they

wrote was uncritically disseminated by large chunks of the mainstream media. And here's NBC again. The Marshall Projects review of 40 major news outlets in the five years after his weekly standard article shows the new legit the neologism popping up nearly 300 times. And that is an undercount. There was the Philadelphia inquirers fawning magazine profile of Delulio who grew up there. Until recently, Pennsylvania had the country's largest population of people still serving life sentences without parole for crimes that committed as children. There was also a lengthy, mostly gentle New Yorker profile, a spot on the New York Times's op ed page, and an appearance on CBS Evening News. The media exposure led to conference invitations,

which led to more media exposure. The word super predator became so much a part of the national vocabulary that journalists and talk show hosts used it without reference to Delulio, including even Oprah Winfrey in a segment on Good Morning America. Yeah, this is one of those things that is just such a successful piece of fucking culture jamming. Yeah, Clinton too. Everyone uses it and most people don't even recognize know anything about Delulio, know anything about Wilson, know anything about like where this comes from. They just kind of take it as scientific fact almost that moment, even with with Oprah's like stellar reputation with black people that moment, like we never forgot that. Yeah, you know what I'm saying? That was like, yo, really? Like

you really gonna let this man talk talk about us like this? Yeah. And it's perfect. What he's saying is really perfectly framed for shows like Oprah was doing for like daytime TV, right? Yeah, kind of thing that people who are like in the middle of their day will stop to hear about because you're tickling that amygdala. You're making the like for one thing, adults are always a little not always, but it is very common for adults to be kind of uncomfortable around teenagers. They're weird. They like things you don't understand. Yeah, you forgot what it was like to be one. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And if you can, again, there's a shitload of money to be made and tapping into the fact that a lot of adults are just kind of uncomfortable around teens. Yeah. And to our

to our, I mean, I taught freshmen, so I was around teens all the time. But in adults defense, teens are weird. Oh, yeah, I got one in my house and without a taser for sure. Yes. I got one in my house and I'll be like, I love you. You are, you are, you are my child. I am raising you, but you're weird because like. Oh, yeah. Yeah. They're like all sorts of music that I just think finally people finally music is wrong. It took a long time. It took a long time. Everyone before me who said that music was wrong was wrong, but now it's wrong. Now it's wrong. Now it's wrong. Now I am happy to report that my child is an old soul when it comes to music and like we actually like a lot of the same stuff except for her BTS obsession. But besides that,

we're like, we're pretty much on the same page. But that's an exception. Her father's a rapper. So yeah, of course, she's going to know a little bit more about music. Yeah, it's anyway. So yeah, the fear dreamed up or drummed up by these nonsense theories and the media recitations of them led to a surge in zero tolerance in zero tolerance rules for kids in school. And a lot of horrible shit we covered in an episode we did titled the war on children. If you want more of an idea of how politicians grabbed onto all of this, I should read a quote from Senator Orrin Hatch in 1996. We've got to quit coddling these violent kids like nothing is going on, getting some of these do good or liberals to do what's right is real tough.

We'd all like to rehabilitate these kids, but by gosh, we are in a different age. All right. Orrin Hatch, everybody. Orrin Hatch, everybody. The man who made sure that you can sell supplements filled with lead to people and there's no regulations on it. Good man. That's our guy. We love Orrin Hatch. So today, however, we're not this is just a lead in because the thing that we are talking is one of the worst crimes all this rhetoric and racism directly enabled. This is a story of greed that begat violence on an almost industrial scale, the cash for kids scandal. Now our two main bastards for today are a pair of former judges, Mark Ciavarela and Michael Conahan. Yes,

Ciavarela is how it's pronounced, more or less. Now, Mark A. Ciavarela was born on March 3, 1950 in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. He was raised on the east end of the city and he went to a Catholic high school. Here's how the New York Times described his upbringing. Quote, a stellar athlete and student judge Ciavarela was the son of a brewery worker and a phone company operator nicknamed Scooch. Like his father, he drove a beat up Volkswagen Beetle for years. And even after moving away, he visited his aging mother daily until she died in 2007. So boy's name was Scooch. Scooch. Scooch. And Scooch grows up, you know, to his credit, he's working class like a lot of most people become judges, not don't come. That's what I'm trying to say, man. You have

nicknamed like Scooch, bro. Like how do you become a judge, man? If you're Scooch. Yeah. I'm like, you are the guys, bro. They don't call rich kids Scooch. No. Nobody ever went to a British boarding school and got called Scooch. Bro, Scooch, man, you and Scooch, y'all cut school, went to the corner liquor store, stole a beer and like hung out and smoked your granddad's cigarettes. Like that's Scooch. Absolutely. Scooch stole a lot of cigarettes. Yeah. I'm going to say 13. I'm at least. Yeah. So after law school, he went to Duquesne University in Pittsburgh. I think that's how it pronounced. Mark Ciavarela ran for a seat in the country's court of common pleas in August of 1994. Now, as a judge, because he wins, he becomes known for the fact that he is

a harsh sentencer and also kind of like he likes to be kind of the judge Judy dude. He likes to have these like quips and shit. And I want to play an ad from his 1994 campaign to make it clear how inside of the super predator zeitgeist this dude was. I hate this guy already. Yeah, he's not great. You're a teen and convicted of murder, rape or violent crimes against our children or the elderly. You can expect that I will impose the maximum sentence allowed by law. Now, you can't do that. No, legally. No, you can't run to be a judge. There's a thing called the judicial code of conduct. Dude, one of the things it says is that if you're running to be a judge, you can't make pledges or promises to voters about your rulings. Other than that, they'll be faithful and impartial.

Listen, because you're a judge. Listen, okay, can I can I put my teacher hat on right now? Yeah. Okay, listen, civics lesson, you got your three branches of government, right? And two of the three branches are elected officials. The reason why you don't elect quote unquote judges are because they are supposed to be above the fray. You're supposed to not be able to, because of popularity, what's going on in the world, you're supposed to not be, they are supposed to be above that because they are adjudicating the rights and privileges of everybody around us. So you're not supposed to do that. You even running an ad is already like, fam, what is you, you can't like this is not, then you got a law school G like you're not allowed to, I'm so frustrated right now. I'm sorry. Yeah.

Yeah, it is frustrating. Yeah. But you know what's not frustrating? The products and services that support this podcast, because they are very few of whom are running for judgeships, although never know, potentially some. Did you just say that the products and services are frustrating? None of them. Not a single one. I don't know, man. Some of those dudes be seeping in. I don't know what our filters be doing, you know what I'm saying? But I will say it's a lot of y'all, because y'all be showing up, boy. Yeah. Yeah. What should be the Washington State Highway Patrol again? How did that happen? How did that happen? It's weird too that they would like. And why us? Who becomes a cop in Washington because of a podcast ad? It's like when Coke Industries was

like, who the fuck? Like what motherfucker listens to a podcast and goes, well, that's where I'm giving my oil refining business. Who is our demographic? Who do we want to move to Ohio? Yeah, it's very funny. People that listen to these podcasts. Yeah. So here's some ads. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the

FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark, and not on the gun badass way. He's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure, he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one

that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system

today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus? It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back. So one of Judge Ciavarela's opponents in that election, Thomas Cometta, later like he brings up that like this ad is a breach of judicial ethics.

Yeah. And Cometta says pretty sensibly, how can you trust someone who runs for judge and breaks the law as a candidate to like follow the law while they're a judge, right? Exactly. Now, our boy responds that it's fine because all of the key words in his ad were quote, allowed by law, which is a very funny response to this. I hate this guy so much. Yeah. Oh my god, I hate this guy. You ruined my childhood. I'm telling you, whoever that is, he ruined my childhood. Yeah. I don't, I'm not even in his state. Oh boy. He, he, he was a real king of ruining childhoods, this guy. Yes. So Judge Ciavarela, however it's pronounced, I'm hearing some weird things in the Italian site that I just checked in to double check this and I forgot. But people,

there's a lot of names in this show, a lot of names. I even watched a documentary about this. I forget I'm bad at it. Like you could deal with it. Go listen to fucking, I don't know, what's another podcast that is good at names? None of them are because they're all done by people like me. Probably some sort of NPR name, NPR show. Yeah, go fucking listen to NPR. They do this shit. They're good at that. Whatever. The thing is, the thing is he put a lot of innocent people in jail. I already know that. He does. Oh, that's, yeah. You and him got to tell, I already know he did. Yeah. Yes. So that's Judge Ciavarela's background, right? That's the kind of man he is. And we'll return to him in a minute because he's our main character today,

but we should talk about a friend of his, Judge Michael Conahan, who's another part of this story. Conahan. Yeah. Now where Ciavarela was a working class kid who clawed his way into the upper crust, Michael was born sipping mint juleps at the country club. That may be a slight exaggeration, but his dad was town mayor for 12 years. So he is, you know, like he's, he's the mayor's son. Yeah. I hate this guy. Now his dad also owned a funeral home and was a heinously abusive prick. While Conahan was begging for clemency, spoilers, years later, his lawyer said, quote, he comes from a family with a patriarch who drove his children to success and used money as a barometer of that success. He was taught the ins justified the means. Wait, did you say he was begging for

clemency? Yeah, this is when he's being tried for the stuff that he does. So take this with a grain of salt, right? Oh, yeah. But here's the Times Tribune trying like reporting on what he claimed about his upbringing later. Mr. Conahan was beaten mercilessly by his father when he was a teenager for simply forgetting to stoke the family furnace at the funeral home. His childhood left him with deep insecurities and inadequacies that he repressed with alcohol. So he's he definitely, I think, has a drinking problem. We'll talk about how much we believe any of that or how much we believe it even if it does do says later. See, that's that's the stuff that I'll be like, listen, man, you just you just can't trust white people. Yeah, because I'll be like, what that should do was build

empathy. Yeah, that you went through that. You should be like, you know, I'm going to be much more gracious to a lot of people. These people come from struggle. It's been hard. Hell, I was beat for doing things. I wonder if I understand that you may have made some bad decisions in your life. It's all good, man. I'm gonna give you a second chance. But no, you decided to become nah, bro. Nah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's one of those like, I know a lot of people who got smacked around as kids. Me too. Most people I know did not do the things that this guy later does. I don't even y'all. So I was like, you don't even need to finish. I've been smacked around. Do you know what I said? I got I got spanked in my public school. Dude. Me too. Yeah.

Yeah. Now, while Conahan was still a child, there was an incident in his father's political career that one of his sisters would later note is relevant. Their dad awarded a business contract to a good friend, which led to charges that he'd committed an ethics violation. Quote, the elder Mr. Conahan couldn't understand why people considered it an ethical violation because he was awarding a contract to a friend because he thought that friends work would benefit the community. She said their father never understood this. He couldn't see what the problem was. So no, in these two guys prop, you've got one working class kid with a chip on his shoulder who's willing to violate ethical guidelines to threaten children in order to get elected by

hitching his star to a racist criminal justice trend. And then you've got the insecure and possibly traumatized rich kids son of a politician raised to believe that blatant cronyism and corruption is fine if your goals are noble, right? So these are our main characters today. Combo. Yo, these are real combo. I appreciate you having me on this because I would have had thoughts had I been listening to this show, I'd be like, I got thoughts. So I'm very glad to be on this. Yeah. Oh boy. Buckle in. So Judge Sierra Varela was on the county court of common pleas and Judge Conahan was the president judge, which gave him power of the purse he gets to decide spending for a lot of the local justice system, right? Like he's a big part. He has a lot of power

deciding where the money goes in terms of like incarceration and stuff for the county. Okay. The New York Times lays out what happens next. Quote, it all started in June of 2000 with a simple business proposition, according to the judge's indictment and more than 40 interviews with courtroom workers, authorities and others. Robert J. Powell, a wealthy personal injury lawyer from Hazelton, Pennsylvania and longtime friend of Judge Conahan wanted to know how he might get a contract to build a private detention center. Judge Sierra Varela thought he could help. The two men agreed to meet and according to prosecutors, somewhere in that conversation, a plan was hatched that courthouse workers and county officials would later describe as a

freight train without breaks. First, Judge Sierra Varela put Mr. Powell in touch with a developer who also happened to be an old friend, Robert K. Miracle, to start work on finding a site. Then in January 2002, the month Judge Conahan became president judge, giving him control of the courthouse budget, he signed a secret deal with Mr. Powell, agreeing that the court would pay 1.3 million in annual rent on top of tens of millions of dollars that the county and state would pay to house the delinquent juveniles. By the end of that year, Judge Conahan had gotten rid of the competition by eliminating financing for the county detention center. They make a deal with these people making a child prison and then they close the county child prison and agree not

just to send kids there and give them the money that comes from sending kids there, but to give them a special 1.3 million dollar a year deal on top of all that money. It's already pretty fucked up. It's already all bad, dude. Okay, let me not say every. In California, when I was teaching, the theory was it takes about $3,000 a day to educate a child. So when you got into school, took role and you clicked Evans here, click, the school got $3,000, right? So this is why role was so important. And when you ditched why it was so important, why they had truancy officers, why the police pulled up if you wasn't at school, because it's like, I make three grand every time you hear and every time you not hear with some sort of unexcused absence,

I'm losing $3,000 per student. So I am incentivized just to make sure you in the seat. I really don't care whether you learn anything or not. I just need to know you in the seat. So when you add that to prisons, it's the same thing. How much does it cost to prison a kid to, you know, in prison a kid $3,000, $5,000. You mean to tell me I can make how much, how much can I make per thing? Okay, dope. Well, then check this out. Here's the situation. How about I feed you stuff and you just throw me money back. God, it's fucked up. I mean, and it is, it is like, it's a little more understandable in schools just because like, yes, school has fixed costs, budgets are usually tight and like, that's a problem. It is a problem. With what's happening here, they had a place to put these

kids purely about allowing a couple of dudes to profit, to profit off of incarcerating children. And this was a really obvious scheme too. Many of their colleagues saw what was going on, at least the surface parts of it and complained. Judge Chester Moroski sent a letter to the county commissioners complaining about the increase in detention costs. He was transferred by Conahan to another court a couple of days later, because again, Conahan's the president judge. Yeah. So this other judge complains and he's like, yeah, you got a different job now, man. Yeah. Moroski later told interviewers, quote, they were unstoppable. I knew something was wrong, but they silenced all dissent. And again, he doesn't know everything that we would know later. He

just knows that like something shady is going on and he complains about like the detention center. So there's a lawsuit over this. The county controller Steve Flood leaked a state audit which showed that the state had analyzed the deal to lease the center as a bad one. So Steve Flood leaks that like, hey, the state said that like, there's no good reason to do this. This is just like seems to kind of be a grift. Yeah. Now the child prison in question, which was named PA Child Care, then sued Mr. Flood for releasing trade secrets, while Judge Conahan sealed the lawsuit to stop any of the leaked documents from getting out to the public. One court worker later told the Times, everyone began to assume that the judges had some vested

interest in the private center because they were pushing it so doggedly. Yeah. And they did. Of course they did. I was like, please get to that. Yeah. Like, of course they did. Why kids get maximum sentences. We teenagers get maximum sentences. Anyway, go boy. It's it's prop. You already know how bad this is, but also it's going to be worse in some ways than I think you might be ready for. You probably are because I only know my own experience. I only know California. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'll be interested to see if you're surprised by some of the things these kids go away for because I don't know. Like you have. I mean, they're like, okay, before you tell me this story, I will tell you the story of a friend of mine who he was a upperclassman was in, I'll tell you two

stories. One, he was in the backseat basketball player in the backseat, asked for a ride home, you know, your kids, you know, some kids got a car, like everybody have a car. This kid's got a car. It's like, hey, can I get a ride home? It's like, yeah, get a ride home. We're going to make a stop right quick. So the dudes up front in the front made a stop right quick, broke into somebody's house, robbed some stuff, get in there. He's in the backseat sleep. Oh, right. The kids tell even on the stand, the kids were like, yo, he really had nothing to do with it. We was just giving him a ride home. He's not really involved in all that. Kid did five years and they told him they told the judge, dude, we were just giving him a ride home. Like he had nothing to do with it. Still went to prison.

Right. I have another friend whose uncle was hiding a syringe from his mom or my friend's grandma, because that was his uncle, right? So he was like, so that's my friend's mom. So he's like, it was a syringe in his backpack, had no idea. You have this thing that was called the gang injunctions in Los Angeles, which was like, if you were, if you were in more than, if you were in a group of two or three more people, right, it's considered a gang, right? So you walk it home from school with two of your friends, you're in a gang, right? So the fool pulls them over, searches the backpack, you got a crack syringe, right? The judge, listen, on mama's Robert, the judge was like, this kid has no criminal record. I truly believe his story, but the law says I have a mandatory

minimum of five years. This kid did five years. For his uncle syringe came out of criminal. Guy came out of prison, a criminal. Now he's a criminal because you just threw him to the wolves. Yeah. And there's a lot of documentation of that. That's what happens when you send kids to these facilities. All right. So I will tell you some of the things these kids went away for. And we'll see how you feel about that. But Jesus Christ. Okay, so pal, the guy who is the realist or the lawyer who like helps start talking about this deal, would later claim in court that after they get this thing underway, the two judges extorted him for bribes. And they basically said, we won't send more kids to your facility and it'll go out of

business, right? If you don't pay us directly. I think that's a lie. Obviously they got paid. I think he's lying about them extorting him. I suspect this was the plan from the beginning, right? There's a number of reasons this is unlikely. One thing is that as the Times Tribune reports, which is a local paper, there were plenty of other kids from Pennsylvania to go to the juvenile detention center. They wouldn't have gone out of business if these judges had stopped. So I think they just had, I think they had a mutually beneficial arrangement. I don't think he got extorted at all. The reality seems to be that Powell and his business partner, the builder of the PA childcare center, Robert Maracle, agreed to bribe Conahan and Judge Ciavarela in

order to secure $1.3 million a year in guaranteed rent plus additional funds because every time they get another youth prisoner, they get more money. So in exchange for this, Judge Ciavarela and Conahan get hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in total, about $2.8 million. And this is over, I think, like a four, five year period. So a lot of money. Now, Judge Ciavarela was extremely eager to do his part as this quote from the Wall Street Journal's coverage makes clear, quote, Judge Mark Ciavarela Jr. reportedly sent kids to the private detention centers when probation officers didn't think it was a good idea. He sent kids there when their crimes were nonviolent. He sent kids there when their crimes were insignificant. It was as though he was determined

to keep those private prisons filled with children at all times. According to news stories, offenses as small as swiping a jar of nutmeg or throwing a piece of steak at an adult were enough to merit a trip to the who's gow. Over the years, Mark Ciavarela racked up a truly awesome score. He sent kids to detention instead of other options at twice the state average, according to The New York Times. He tried a prodigious number of cases in which the accused child had no lawyer. Here, says the Times, the judge's numbers were fully 10 times the state average. And he did it fast, sometimes rendering a verdict in the neighborhood of a minute and a half to three minutes. What? Yeah. Oh, man. Just instantly. Some people will say there were 30 second judgments where

he just stands before him and he's just, you're done. Bro. So this is the stuff my pops would talk about. He would be like, we would know him among the other probation officers who they would already know. Like this kid don't need to go to know. He don't need to go to like, he's fine. Just like, let me, you know, I'll take care of him. You know what I'm saying? And you stand in front of the judge, as soon as you see the judge, you'd be like, oh, shit, here we go. He's not going to listen to me. You know what I'm saying? So my father was like, in his 30 years, he never, he never, he never recommended prison ever 30 years, never recommended prison. He was always like, I'll take him, I'll take him, I'll take him, I'll take him. Didn't matter. He knew, he knew the

judge. When he walked in, he knew the judge, he would be like, the kid's going to jail. This kid's going to jail. He just knew as soon as he looked at the judge. Yeah. Yeah. And it's one of those, like, yeah, it's, it's, it's just so fucked up that it, that it could work that way, that it's ever been allowed to work that way. That like, it doesn't, everyone can know it's wrong, including like, fucking the, the, the, the parole officers and everyone, it's just this guy. It's one of those things. Like, I know some people who have like not done time because they got a judge who was like, get a great judge. Chill. Yeah. Like the judge who was like, was like, this is bullshit. Like, I'm not, I have no desire. A friend of mine just didn't go to prison. A couple of, we were at his

all in court with him a couple of months ago. And it was because the judge was like, well, this is, this is like, basically said the judge equivalent, like, this is a stupid case. Yeah. So that does happen. But I mean, that's the Auburn, you know, the Auburn Aubrey case. Like that was a good judge. He was like, what? You get him sometimes. Yeah. Sometimes you get it. When they're bad, they can do a lot of damage. And that's like, C. Varela does a lot of damage. Yeah. The morning call, which is another local paper in Pennsylvania, does a good job of outlining some of the several of these cases. And this is from after this all broke is a story and a bunch of the judges victim sue. So I'm going to, I'm going to read a quote here of them kind of summarizing some of the worst

cases. Among them was Melanie Patrillo, who said she was 12 when she first went before C. Varela in juvenile court in 2002. C. Varela, she said, wouldn't let her speak in her own defense. On Monday, Patrillo testified that a visiting friend set a small fire in a garbage can outside her house. She went inside to get a glass of water and police quickly arrived. She was arrested and later taken before C. Varela, who sentenced her to a few months at the former Lausanne County Juvenile Detention Center. It was horrifying, Patrillo recalled. I had to put a blanket over my head so the cockroaches wouldn't fall on me. Like many of C. Varela and Conahan's victims, this was the start of years of relentless contact between Patrillo, a child and the criminal justice

system. When Patrillo went away for the first time, it was to a county center, not to the place bribing the judge. But she was released under harsh probation terms, which of course she violated, which brought her back in front of Judge C. Varela, who then sent her to PA childcare, who was this place giving him kickbacks. Of course. Yeah. Very old story. Patrillo claims this time behind bars led to her falling in with a bad crowd due to her reputation, which led to her getting a burglary charge. She winds up in front of C. Varela a third time and she doesn't get out of juvenile detention until she's an adult, like her whole childhood from age 12 on. So the last six years of her childhood just gone as a result of this chain of events. Now the judge sent another girl,

Elizabeth Laurent, to PA childcare for 32 days after she was caught bringing opiate pills to school. She of course then had, after getting out of PA childcare, she has a probation violation. Obviously this happens with all of them. And she winds up in front of Judge C. Varela again. He sends her next to Camp Adams, which is a juvenile boot camp. I haven't seen any evidence this boot camp gave him gave him kickbacks. Like he doesn't always send kids to the places that are paying him. He really likes to send kids, incarcerate children, even if he's not getting money. He's just fine to take bribes for it too. Elizabeth Laurent, because she winds up getting sent to this boot camp loses the college scholarship that she'd won. And obviously,

things go worse for her after this, she claims that she started hanging out with a quote unquote bad kid because the parents of her old friends wouldn't let her hang out with him anymore. And like, yeah, things go, you know, from there, she's in and out of different places. Her overwhelming memory of C. Varela as he demolished her hopes and dreams again, she had a college scholarship set up when this happens was coldness and what she described as a nonchalant demeanor. That's what every like he's again, very perfunctory for him. Zachary Richards wound up in front of the judge because he stole a candy bar. He was candy bar. Yeah, at age 14, he steals a candy bar. C.

Varela sends him to juvenile detention. And he's there for the rest of his childhood from age 14 to 18, mostly in PA childcare, the place giving the judge kickbacks. His mom is adamant that Zachary never recovers from this. And she blames his suicide at age 27 on Judge C. Varela. She is not the only mother making this claim. And I'm going to quote now from a write up by pin live. Fonzo's son was 17 and an all star wrestler with a chance at a college scholarship when he landed in C. Varela's courtroom on a minor drug paraphernalia charge. Though the teen, Edward Kinzakowski had no prior criminal record. He spent months at the private lockups and a wilderness camp and missed his senior year of high school. Kinzakowski emerged an angry,

bitter, depressed young man. He committed suicide last June at the age of 23. He was just never the same. He couldn't recover. He wanted to go on with his life, but he was just hurt. He was affected so deeply more than anyone knew. That's his mom. Yeah, it's bleak. Oh, yeah, stuff like that. It just hits so close to home. Yeah, because I know kids who were either my friends or people like taught that like, I know they like, man, these are like gentle souls. Yeah. And then they're put in this situation over a motherfucking candy bar. Come on, man. Yeah. Yeah. And then what's crazy is like, at least in Cali camp is your best bet. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Because it's like, there's a school there. You know what I'm saying? It's not like Eastlake. It's not like

Central, which is like, I mean, that's just that's, or you get sent up to YA, which is California Youth Authority. That's up in the North. That's prison. Yeah. And it varies because some states, the wilderness boot camp, so like the worst place you can go, it just kind of depends on your system because some of those places are nightmares. Yeah. Yeah. It's just everywhere is different, depending on how bad their digital detention is. And obviously our camp is not wilderness in any way. It's just like, there's one in Whittier, California, like just right off the corner of like, yeah, like the wilds of Whittier. Yeah. It's just Los Padrinos. It's like Whittier and freaking Mar Vista Drive. It's just like, oh, hey, look, there's a juvenile prison right there.

Yeah. So one of Judge Sierra Varela's favorite places to send kids when he couldn't send them to PA childcare was the Glyn Mills School. Ryan Lamarrow, for example, was sent there by Sierra Varela for five years on a vandalism charge. Another 14-year-old was sent there for the crime of stealing loose change from unlocked cars to buy a bag of chips. So that's it. That's why that kid gets it to the Glyn Mills School. Not the car. He ain't still the car. Nope. Didn't even break a window. Just took the change out of it. I just needed some quarters. Which like, yeah, we can say is an ideal behavior, but like, I mean, find the kid. Let me, let me tell you what this place is like. I want to quote from a Philadelphia

Enquirer article for some context on the Glyn Mills School where he sends a child for stealing spare change. Okay. Another teenager was removed from Glyn Mills and sent to a state-run facility in 2017 after counselors stepped on the boy's face and broke his jaw so severely it had to be wired shut. And last summer, two counselors were caught abusing a Philadelphia teenager on surveillance video. One slammed him to the floor and choked him. Then the other punched the 17-year-old in the face. Both were later arrested. So that's the kind of shit that happens at Glyn Mills. I feel like you just said stepped on his face. Yep. That's what you say, right? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And these are two, these are a couple of cases, but like,

it happens so constantly that in 2019, Glyn Mills has its license revoked and the state removes all children from its custody. Now, Glyn Mills had been founded in 1826. So Judd Seaverrill is a monster. I'm sure this place has been about that bad forever. Yeah. In their defense, in the 1800s, you could step on a kid's face. Yeah. You could, it was almost mandatory. Yeah. Now, and it's one of those things in, when you read articles about like the fallout from the cash, the cash for kids scandal, you, there's a bunch of like comments from judges and other people in the criminal justice system being like, these men did tremendous damage to the criminal, to trust in the criminal justice system, to the sanctity of the courts, to the

sanctity of justice. It's like, I agree, these guys are pieces of shit, but dude. Yeah. Like, don't, don't try to, don't try to give me that shit. Yeah. Kick rocks, bro. Like, come on now. We ain't as bad as them though. I mean, we bad, but we better than them. Don't try to give me that shit, man. Yeah. Kick rocks, Doug. You're good. And the reality is that all of the horrible things we've talked about, he only got in trouble for because he took bribes to do them. If he'd just done this because he was a piece of shit and he was willing to, he did a lot of it for, without getting bribed. Yeah. If he just hadn't taken the bribes, he never would have gotten in trouble for this shit. And in fact, the hellish sentences he's imposed on children for minor,

what you could only often loosely describe as crimes were lauded and celebrated by his community for years. In 2006, he was reelected for another 10 year term in PR reports, quote, the community applauded him. Schools applauded him. Police applauded him. He would go into schools and he would warn kids, if you come before me, I will send you away. And so schools invited him year after year to come in and talk to them. So when a kid came before him and there was a school crime, this could be a kid getting into a fight or in our case, we had a kid who did a fake MySpace page for the principal. He would say, do you remember me being in your school? And he would say, I wish, I said I would send you away, get him out of here. And that's what

would happen. He sends a kid to a fucking child prison for making a fake MySpace page about like an administrator at the school. Oh my God. Yeah. Like a fake MySpace page. He sends a kid up, he gives them a criminal record for a fake fucking MySpace page. So this is why look, look, let me listeners, this is why we're during elections, when we hear terms like, oh, he's going to be tough on crime. We're like, that's a dog whistle. This is what we're talking about. Yeah. Is like, that's what you mean by tough on crime. Yeah. Like if a kid makes a MySpace, making fun of his principal, I'm tough on crime. Like, all right, bro. That's what you mean by crime. Just blasting kids lives apart. Yeah. For no real reason. But you know, who won't destroy the lives

of children for no good reason. Can't say you can't say that because it could be a Washington State Patrol. It could be a Washington State Highway Patrol. I was like, I don't know, man, I can pretty much guarantee. And that one is a high possibility. One time we had little FBI ads. Yeah. It could be the FBI or it could be. I mean, even worse, it could be one of those the food box companies that uses their profits to hunt children for sport in islands off the coast of Indonesia. What's the one you really don't like? I don't know. Which one? I think you hate Oh, they're the ones who have the island where you can hunt, hunt, hunt kids for sport, right? Are you serious? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Look it up.

During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated the racial justice demonstrations. And you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI sometimes you got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy voiced cigar smoking man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark and on the gun badass way. And nasty sharks. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was

trying to get it to heaven. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space. And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man Sergei Krekalev is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost.

This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world. Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when

there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus. It's all made up. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Ah, we're back. Oh, those are some good ads for ****. Absolutely. Now, 50% prop of children who appeared before Judge C. Avarela did so without a lawyer. He remanded an average of 300 children per year into custody, which is nearly obviously one a day. When you factor in vacations, it probably is about one a day. In the years before he made the deal with PA childcare, C. Avarela had remanded about 4% of the juveniles in his court to criminal custody. As soon as he starts getting paid, it goes to 25%. This is very obvious.

Some of the offenses that he locked kids up for included, as stated, making a face fake myspace page. Other kids were jailed for stealing a $4 jar of nutmeg or throwing a sandal at a parent. I know, right? Yeah. Why would you not laugh if you were a judge? You're like, yo, you do it. You do a chunk right now. Yeah, throw a sandal at the kid. That's a fair punishment. That's a punishment that the kid should have is the judge should throw a sandal at him. Just throw a sandal at him. Yeah. That is absurd. Also, Jen's ears, let me tell you what myspace is. Myspace was when the internet was innocent and it was one of the precursors to, it was a social media page. It's when some guy named Tom tricked all of us into learning how to code. Imagine if

Facebook hadn't destroyed civil society. That was myspace. It was popular for a while. Some people found some good bands because of it and the guy who found it got $600 million and disappeared. It is like, it is not mired in any way in any of the social media page. Never changed his profile picture. Never changed his profile picture and so far there hasn't been any self-indulgent documentaries. Hasn't said shit. Bye. You're welcome. That's what proves he's the only one of them who's a reasonable person because a reasonable person gets $600 million and fuck it. It disappears. Yeah. You're gone. And buys an island and I'm gone. Yeah. Yeah. Cia Varela told one kid during sentencing to count the number of birds on the window sill

outside the courtroom. What? He gave the boy one month in detention for each bird sitting outside the courtroom. Like, that's the kind of shit he's doing because he's like, that is absurd. He's making it fun for himself, you know? Yeah. Oh, because the kid ain't got no lawyer. Yeah. Because the kid ain't got no, who, yeah. What's he gonna do? Complain to someone? Fuck that. Yeah. Yeah. Kid can't be like, I feel like this, I feel like that's not legal. I feel like you can't do that. Yeah. What do you say? Get her kid. Yeah. It's pretty good. Go make me $3,000. In interviews during this period, Cia Varela was very open about how severe he could be. He told one journalist, quote, my experience has been if you bring a child in who broke the law and put

him on probation, chances are he'll be back in the system in a short period of time. If a child believes the consequence will be anything other than placement, they don't care. I have to find consequences that will get their attention. Now, obviously, we know statistically that like the worst thing you can do if you want kids to not go on to go to prison is lock them up when they're kids. Yeah, there's that. It has a massive correlation with them being locked up as adults, but whatever. Yeah. There's that also. Also, let me throw in this thing about probation, why kids go back because if you say part of your probation is you can have no interaction with anyone from your former life or anyone who's involved in any sort of criminal or gang activity.

But if that person is your fucking brother, like, what do you, so do I need to move out? Like, what do you, so if you catch me with my uncle who just sent me to go get some groceries, I bro, I violated probation. I guess I'm going back to prison now. You know what I'm saying? So like, even the probation stuff, like who's going back, it's like, you that's you. So I have to move. What you're saying is if I go back home and a probation officer pull up and I'm literally just sitting on my porch, you know what I'm saying? And the person who's sitting across three who just checking a mail just happens to be from the same hood I'm from. I broke my probation. I'm going back to prison. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, it's very difficult for, for, to not wind up in that situation.

It's, it's, yeah. Yeah. And that's, that's how it's supposed to be. Now, Judgese of Earl explained in an interview to another reporter, quote, school is a place for kids to go and learn. 2% of kids at school should not ruin it for the other 98%. Anyone who gets in the way of that, I don't have a problem sending them away, which is, I, I can't think of how many times I heard logic like this from like adults in my life when I was a kid that like, well, you just got to get rid of those kids who are disrupting everyone else as opposed to like, well, maybe you could figure out what's going on and diverge resources to try to take care of them or whatever. But no, that's not you about the red Mustang. No, that's a similar to like the broken window theory. It's

like the red Mustang is like, well, if any of us are speeding on the road and you're driving a Prius, like nobody notices, but if you're speeding and you're a red Mustang and everybody's going to catch you speeding. So that kid who always got them outbursts who always got, well, you're a red Mustang man, like everybody's going to see what you're doing. So like if you, so you're the problem and everybody sees it. So everybody sees you speeding, then all the little Priuses think that they can speed. So then that's how they do these kids, man. It's, yeah. Yeah. Almost punched an administrator was making that analysis once I was like, yo, I'm you looking at me like, I'm 23 years old as when I first started teaching, I'm like, I'm 23. So I'm looking at you like,

you're talking about me. Like I'm that kid. Like what the, no, I'm good. I can't work here. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's, it's awesome. I mean, because, because they're not thinking about it as like, I'm going, I think we should be destroying the lives of children and condemning them to a life of what in many cases is, is very close to slavery. They're thinking like, well, this is, it's tough love. This is how it's the same attitude towards like, well, yeah, sometimes you got to smack a kid around, you know, sometimes you got to like, you have to, you have to be harsh with children. Otherwise they'll, they'll grow into monsters, which that's a different analysis than we could do. Yeah. I even told a kid who came out of juvie that ended up in my class, I told him that theory,

but I told him in the theory in the sense that like, these people are gunning for you. You know what I'm saying? So I'm like, like, stay close homie. Like just in the sense of like, I'm trying to like, I'm trying to protect you from this. You know what I'm saying? Like matter of fact, like the juvie you came from, I used to work at before I worked here. So I'm like, I'm trying to tell you, bro, you ain't trying to go back, right? They gunning for you. This the way they think of you. They think of you like this, bro, man, I'm, I'm, I'm so, read more. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the, yeah, it's, it's, it's pretty bad. This is a pretty bad scheme that these guys have. And again, it would have been perfectly legal if they hadn't been taking

bribes, nothing about these horrible, you see in all the coverage, these like horrible cases that I've just related to you, they go into detail about them, but they rarely note that like, and it would have been fine if they hadn't taken kick. Those are crimes. Yeah. Yeah. Those are crimes. You could be bad to children as you want as a judge. It's fine. Yeah. The scheme fell apart because in 2007, the parent of a child being railroaded by the judge placed a call to the juvenile law center of Pennsylvania. And these people rule. They started to investigate and found that kids regularly appeared in front of the judge without any law year of their own. And again, this is something he gets in trouble for. It's something you can say like he doesn't have

a legal right to do, but he'd done stuff like the campaign ad that he couldn't technically do. Yeah, you're not supposed to. He wouldn't have gotten in trouble for this if it hadn't been for the bribes. I don't think. I think it's really unlikely. They noted, so these, the juvenile law center looks into him and they noticed that he's got this tendency, kids are showing up without a lawyer, and he's got a tendency to very quickly make, declare children guilty and take them away from their parents. So they petitioned the state supreme court in 2008 to vacate these judgments and the court denies them. So again, if it hadn't been for the bribery, the court like already proved if it hadn't been for the

bribery, he probably would have been fine. The thing that destroys him is that in 2006, so two years before the juvenile law center starts their investigation and makes this petition, the FBI gets a tip about the fact that he's being bribed from somebody who works in and around him. Right? Finally, one of these fucking people, because everyone knows what's more or less what's happening. They don't know for a fact about the bribery, but like he buys a yacht. He and Judge Conahan have these mansions next to each other. They've got like, yeah, they're like living better than the judges don't aren't poor people, right? Like taking care of, but like they're living out of their means. He walking in with a rolly, got the rolly on. It's like, some guys like,

yo, where you get that Rolex? Oh, you know, me and work some overtime. Like what? Yeah. Bam. Yeah. Where you get that Rolex from? Judge overtime? Uh-huh. Yeah. You get judges. There's no such thing as judge overtime, G. There's no such thing as sink. So somebody gives the FBI a tip and they do an investigation. And in 2008, the same year that the state supreme court denies this petition, the FBI charges him and they come out with like, you know, it's the same thing we've seen with like the Capitol. You get this big charging document that has all of the things the state is accusing them of. They accuse C. Averella and Conahan of quote, ordering juveniles to be sent to these facilities in which judges had a financial interest even when juvenile probation

officers did not recommend placement. Now, a flurry of press coverage and investigations followed. Here's the juvenile justice center. Quote, the scope of the violations of the children's rights in Luzern County turned out to be more egregious than anyone could have imagined. From 2003 to 2008, the Luzern County judicial corruption scandal altered the lives of more than 2,500 children and involved more than 6,000 cases. Over 50% of the children who appeared before C. Averella lacked legal representation. 60% of these children were removed from their homes. Many of them were sent to one or both of the two facilities at the center of the corruption scandal believed to be the largest judicial corruption scandal in our history. This is like a lot of

lives that these guys just nuke. I mean, yeah. And those numbers are pretty stark. So Judge Conahan, the guy who says his dad beat him and, you know, is not a holic, as soon as the FBI starts gunning for them and there's charging documents, he is smarter than his partner. He's like, yep, I did it. You know what? Yeah, you don't have to take me to court. I plead guilty, right? Which saves the government a lot of money and is a general rule. That's part of why if you plead, and this is problematic too, because oftentimes they use this to like fuck people over and like give people charges that maybe they wouldn't know that they went to court, but you kind of take, well, it better to take a guarantee. Just take the hell.

Maybe go away for 10 years if this actually goes to right. In this case, it's fine. He's absolutely guilty. He pleads guilty. He gets like 11 years. Robert Maracle, who's the guy who's the builder, gets like gets like a year or so. So does Robert Powell. So everyone involved pleads guilty and goes away, except for Judge Ciavarella, who decides he's not going to plead guilty. He denies he did anything wrong and he demands to take it to trial and fight his charges. And he's the one that he's the one that like came from the struggle. He's the trigger man. Yeah. And he's the he's the guy who grew up poor too. Okay. This is all adding up. Yeah. Because like, if you know, you come from money, you know how to play the game. You like, listen, dude, I'm guilty.

Yeah. Also, as a side note for anybody who's in any sort of like romantic relationships, take the advice of the rich, dude, just take the L. Listen, when you, if you wrong, you know you wrong, just take the L. You know a baby love, babe, my bad. You are right. It's comprehensively good advice. It is comprehensively good advice. The L. Yeah. Just take the L guys. So Judge Ciavarella does not do this. And he makes it very public. He's constantly, while his trial is going on, he's up in front of the press as often as possible. He defends himself by saying shit like this to journalists about the bribes that he took. Look, this was a finder's fee. We needed this center built. I was always yelling

at kids because that's what they needed because parents didn't know it to be parents and so forth. So what's the big deal now? I mean, everybody was celebrating me all these years and now they're not happy with me anymore just because I took this money. You said it's a finder's fee. This was a finder's fee, fam. This commission, y'all talking about bribes, it was a finder's fee. Y'all talking about how dangerous the streets of Philadelphia are. I didn't clean these streets up and now you got a problem. I made a little money off it. Dang. It's very funny. So he gets convicted and he sentenced to like 28 years in prison. Now, Conahan also gets like 11 years or

something like that, a pretty significant sentence. But after he's in prison a few years, COVID-19 hit. These guys get convicted in 2008, 2009. COVID-19 hits a decade or so later and Conahan gets compassionately to go live with his wife under house arrest. So he's in a back in his mansion with his wife. He does his time, but like a little early. Judge C. Avarella is still incarcerated and he's appealed constantly. He continues to protest his conviction sentence and he's asked, he asks to be set free as a result of COVID. And I want to quote from an article in The Times Leader about his judge's response to him asking to get out early. Chief U.S. District Judge Christopher C. Connor acknowledged that these are compelling reasons

for compassionate release, but still denied it, saying that C. Avarella continues to fail to acknowledge the seriousness of his conduct. While he now concedes his honest services, mail fraud and tax fraud charges are serious crimes and are not to be taken lightly, Connor writes in his decision, he persists in downplaying the overall criminal scheme and his role within it. Connor goes on to say that the primary need for C. Avarella's lengthy prison sentence is so he can reflect on the seriousness of the crime and to promote respect for the law, something which Connor suggests has not happened. So, I don't know. The judge is like, you still don't get it.

Yeah. Think about that however you want, right? Not, but I'm glad he's punished for it. Fuck him. The boy got to go home with the ankle bracelet. The other homie that tried to fight is like, nah, nigga, y'all can sit in there. Dang. Yeah. And Conahan does some time and it's like, again, think about him getting let out early however you want. C. Avarella is the one who is doing the direct harm, the most direct harm, at least. They both are doing direct harm. C. Avarella is the one kind of sentencing the kids. What kind of prison is that? Do you know what kind of prison they're in? I think it's got to be a federal prison, right? Because you get a federal prison.

Yeah, it's a federal prison. It's probably a nicer federal prison, I would guess. That's what I was going to say. I was like, I'm going to guess it's not the worst of them, but I don't know. You can't put no judge in no G-pop, you know what I'm saying? You have to be careful with that guy so he doesn't get, you know, murdered. Yeah, or he ain't doing a lot of time. That time is going to be done real quick. You put a judge in there with a general population. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that's the cash for kids scandal. Oh my God, dude.

Good stuff. How you feeling? Triggered. Yeah. Reminded of a lot of things. And bad. I feel like... Good way to describe it. This is the type of stuff that I find so... How do I say this? Refreshing in the sense that it's telling the rest of the world, like, see, we're not crazy. I'm not making this stuff up. When we say it's like, I don't have two hours to explain to you that the system is broken, or that it's corrupt. And just, well, if you were not guilty, then you have nothing to worry about,

like, to explain why that's the dumbest shit I ever heard. It's like, listen, this is what I'm trying to tell you. Like, fools get sent to jail on dumb shit because there's money to be made. This is what I'm trying to say. You know what I'm saying? And it's like, this, they got in trouble because it was obvious. Other judges make money doing this shit. They just don't take a direct payment from a dude because that's stupid. Because they're smarter. They get consulting fees. They get, like, side jobs where they're, like, working for this company or giving advice or, like, helping to do, like, there's ways. Everyone... It's the same way with, like, congressmen. The dumb ones take a pile of

cash or something. The smart ones quit and get a highly paid job as a consultant, right? Like, there's... Yeah, there's so many ways. Other people profit from doing the same thing that these guys got caught because they were stupid as shit. Yes. Yeah. And they still were able to nuke 2,500 people's lives, you know, at least for a while. Hopefully, as many of them as possible recovered. But, you know, not all did. Obviously, we talked about doing it ourselves, right? Like, yeah. It's hard to come back, dude. It's hard to come back. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. All right. Thanks for this one. On Thursday, we're talking about the Texas criminal justice system. That's the bastard. Is the Texas juvenile criminal justice system. Oh, okay, great. Yeah. So, check back in Thursday.

And I don't know, go hug a cat. Yeah. What are we doing? Is it a live show, Sophie? Yeah. February 17th, fool. February 17th. In the episode description, you can click the link, but it's momenthouse.com slash behind the bastards. It's the three of us doing a live stream show. And you can watch it wherever you want to. It'll be live for a little while, too. So, if you can't do 6 p.m. Pacific, you can do it on demand. Yeah. Some other time. Yep. Yeah. That'll be fun. Yeah. Check it out. And oh, yeah, I got a novel. You can. Yeah, you do. You can Google after the revolution, a.k.a. press. If you preorder it now, you get a signed copy. It'll come out in May. So, go buy that. You get a book, too, don't you,

Mr. Prop? I do, man. You can call me Ernest Slimmingway. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. A poetry book called Terraform, prophipop.com. Come grab that book. It's poetry and short story. I think it's dope. Sophie got a signed copy. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's good stuff. Yeah. Check it out and go. Go check us back out on Thursday, where it'll be sad again. Yep. Bam. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcasts. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know because I'm Lance Bass and I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the earth for 313 days that changed the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.