It turns out that disgraced Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella won’t be getting a compassionate release after all.
Ciavarella, 70, filed a motion last month seeking compassionate release from his 28-year prison sentence in connection with the so-called “kids-for-cash” scandal, citing a number of health conditions that he said would put him at higher risk of a severe reaction to COVID-19, should he contract it in prison.
Ciavarella said he suffers from stage 3 chronic kidney disease, along with a number of other ailments, all of which combine, he says, to significant risk from COVID-19 — especially since nearly 350 other prisoners at FCI Ashland, where he is locked up, have contracted the virus.
Chief U.S. District Judge Christopher C. Conner acknowledged that these are compelling reasons for compassionate release, but still denied it, saying that Ciavarella 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,’” Conner writes in his decision, “he persists in downplaying the overall criminal scheme and his roll within it.”
Conner goes on to say that the primary need for Ciavarella’s lengthy prison sentence is so he can “reflect” on the seriousness of the crime and to promote respect for the law, something which Conner suggests has not happened.
Conner references a previous decision he handed down in regards to another one of Ciavarella’s numerous requests for relief, in which Ciavarella asked to have his sentence reduced. Conner denied that motion, saying the nearly three-decade-long sentence “fits both the crime and the criminal.”
In this latest order, Conner says this is still true.
“The defendant committed a massive breach of the public trust, causing harm to vulnerable juvenile victims and badly damaging the integrity of the state’s judicial system,” he writes. “His crimes were not the product of mistake or lapse in judgment; this defendant knew better — or, at the very least, he should have.”
Conner goes on to say that there is no basis to more than halve Ciavarella’s prison term.
It’s just the latest twist in the long ongoing story of Ciavarella, who was originally found guilty on a series of charges, including racketeering, racketeering conspiracy and conspiracy to commit money laundering.
Many of these charges were overturned by Conner, with the exception of honest-services mail fraud and accepting bribes in an official capacity, but the judge has consistently denied Ciavarella’s attempts to have his sentence reduced.