Again, "do the right thing for the right reason" has completely gone awry.
The corrupt former Pennsylvania judge convicted of funneling juveniles to for-profit detention facilities in exchange for $2.1 million in kickbacks had his lengthy prison sentence commuted Thursday by President Biden.
Former Luzerne County Judge Michael Conahan, the jurist at the center of the so-called “Kids-for-Cash” scandal, was among 1,499 commutations the 82-year-old lame-duck president granted in the largest presidential act of clemency on a single day in modern history, according to the White House.
“I am shocked and I am hurt,” Sandy Fonzo, whose son committed suicide after he was locked up as part of the scheme orchestrated by Conahan and former judge Mark Ciavarella, said in a statement.
More than 2,500 children between 2003 and 2008 were potentially given disproportionate sentences by Conahan and Ciavarella in order to populate the private detention centers paying them the kickbacks, investigators believe.
Thousands of juvenile sentences were vacated by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in the wake of the scandal.
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