Am I the only one who knows a corrupt Pennsylvania judge who is often praised for being fair? To be specific, the judge to whom I am referring is Teresa M. Sarmina. Has anyone ever seen how this judge handles cases? With all due respect, this judge is as much of a criminal as the defendants whose cases over which she presides. Am I the only one who has witnessed this woman abuse the public's trust?
And what about the Superior Court? Terrible. Absolutely terrible. The only judge on that court worthy to be a judge appears to be Richard C. Klein. Has anyone ever had a case before the Superior Court and the court ruled against you based on made-up facts? If you are preparing a clients appeal, wish to God that Judge Robert Colville is not on your panel--the man's a criminal. The same can be said of then Superior Court judges Daniels and Anthony. Has anyone else witnessed corruption in our courts?
Koba
Interesting
I'm not sure about the specific judges you name, or their levels of corruption, however you raise an interesting point.
Pennsylvania's judgeship breeds corruption - in large part because it is one of only 7 states that elects the position. By forcing judges to be elected, it places political strains upon them which should be reserved for the Executive and Legislative branches, not the judicial. Judges are judges, not politicians, and forcing them to be politicians facilitates the type of widespread corruption you touched on.
PA courts are very corrupt
It is an interesting question that you raise. Few will admit just how fundamentally corrupt the PA court system is, as has been shown in an extreme way with Mumia Abu-Jamal. This was one of the key points in the Amnesty Intl report on Mumia's case, as they harshly criticized the PA courts, all the way up the Supreme Court.
Your comment about Judge Klein is also quite interesting in how it relates to Mumia. Indeed, he was court stenographer Terri Mauer-Carter's boss in 1982 when she was working as a stenographer in the Philadelphia Court system on the eve of Mumia's 1982 trial. She states that she overheard judge Sabo say in reference to Mumia's case that he was going to help the prosecution “fry the nigger.”
In 2002, Journalist Dave Lindorff interviewed Mauer-Carter's former boss at the time, Richard Klein, who was with Mauer-Carter when she states she overheard Sabo. A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge at the time who now sits on PA's Superior Court, Klein told Lindorff: "I won't say it did happen, and I won't say it didn't. That was a long time ago." Lindorff considers Klein's refusal to firmly reject Mauer-Carter's claim to be an affirmation of her statement.
In 2003, the State Supreme Court ruling would not allow Mauer-Carter's affidavit to be admitted as evidence, which was an affirmation of lower-level Judge Patricia Dembe's argument that even if Maurer-Carter is correct about Sabo's stated intent to use his position as Judge to throw the trial and help the prosecution "fry the nigger," it doesn't matter. According to Dembe, since it "was a jury trial, as long as the presiding Judge's rulings were legally correct, claims as to what might have motivated or animated those rulings are not relevant."
Mauer-Carter is featured in a trailer for the new British documentary:
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=241...