Attorney Al Flora Jr. stood outside a federal courthouse in Scranton 10 years ago and declared victory on behalf of former Luzerne County Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. after a jury acquitted him of 27 of 39 charges.
The veteran lawyer insisted the jury validated the defenseâs claims the case was never about âcash for kids.â
But, a decade later, Flora concedes the kids-for-cash label damaged Ciavarella in the court of public opinion and proved to be a major obstacle to overcome at trial.
Truly, he said the defense knew anything but a total acquittal would be a major blow to Ciavarella and assure a lengthy federal prison sentence for the former judge. Flora said his victory declaration â despite Ciavarellaâs conviction on 12 charges, including racketeering â was done mainly to appease the former judge, who adamantly wanted to take his case to trial to fight the kids-for-cash theory, which he vehemently denies to this day.
you can even take a full-size or above and still pay the mid-size price. here we are. [ male announcer ] and there you go, business pro. there you go. go national. go like a pro. riding the dog like it s a small horse is frowned upon in this establishment! luckily though, ya know, i conceal this bad boy underneath my blanket just so i can get on e-trade and check my investment portfolio, research stocks, and set conditional orders. wait, why are you taking. oh, i see. hey max, would it kill you to throw a guy a warning bark? [ dog barks ] you know i wanted a bird. [ male announcer ] e-trade. investing unleashed. last night, we had sandy fonzo on the show, she s the mother of a 17-year-old sent to a juvenile detention center by a judge convicted in what prosecutors described as a kids for cash scheme where the two
and that s just two guys. now, that s elite. i don t begrudge them for making their money. what bothers me is when they purchase their politicians to do it. like when we bailed out the bankers. when our politicians give tax brakes to the coke brothers and put more pollutants in the air? they get to do that because they re the real elites, the ones with enough money to buy their government. then they send their minions like governor walker to cut the pay of, to fire, to take away the rights of the average worker. and governor daniels to add insult to injury by saying the regular guys are the real elite. come on, man, you ve got some sof decency. it s bad enough you get all the privileges the rest of us don t have, but you blame us for the problems you created and blame the middle class for secretly controlling politics? sandy fonzo s son didn t have a
lawyer. 9 kids didn t have anything. i feel sick for what happened to your family. i want to thank you for joining us and, you know, words can t make it better. can i just say out of you know, all the interviews i ve been doing, i haven t been able to get what i want to do now, you know, so that my son s death was not in vain. i want to be available for all of these parents to come, you know, through with their stories, show up with me at the sentencing. i want hundreds of thousands of them for ciavarello to have to walk through and see the faces of all those kids that he s impacted and the lives and families he s impacted. i want them to contact this judge. i have an address on my facebook page. tell him that we will not accept this minimum plea. i m living a life sentence from him. you know, we re trying to put together a book with these stories. the websites are listed on our site. so everybody look it up. sandy fonzo, the mom involved. you ll be able to find her facebook pa
huh? the female photographer knocked to the ground wasn t seriously injured, neither was the reporter. no arrests have been made, but police say they are going to take a look at those tapes. message my kid s not here. he s dead! because of him. he ruined my [ bleep ] life! a mother s rage caught on camera. sandy fonzo lashed out at a former judge friday after the verdict in his corruption trial in scranton. prosecutors said the judge took kickbacks from the developer of a privately owned detention center. shiv rely la said the juvenile detention center for a minor drug offense. she said her son, only 17 years old at the time, never got over the ordeal. last june he committed suicide. a u.s. navy warship and some navy helicopters now on the trail of a hijacked yacht sailing the indian ocean with four americans on board. owned by this couple of