[5] Ciavarella was a lifelong resident of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, having been raised in the East End section of the city and attending St. Mary's High School.
[6] Ciavarella pleaded guilty on February 13, 2009, pursuant to a plea agreement, to federal charges of honest services fraud, wire fraud and tax evasion in connection with receiving $2.6 million in kickbacks from Robert Powell and Robert Mericle, the co-owner and builder respectively, of two private, for-profit juvenile facilities of PA Child Care.
In exchange for these kickbacks, Ciavarella sentenced children to extended stays in juvenile detention for offenses as minimal as mocking a principal on Myspace, trespassing in a vacant building, acting as a lookout for a shoplifter of DVDs from Wal-mart,[7] jaywalking,[8] and driving a car over a curb without a driver's licence.
[10] Ciavarella tendered his resignation to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell on January 23, 2009, prior to official publication of the charges.
[2] The plea agreement witnessed by defense attorneys Albert Flora and William Ruzzo[11] called for Ciavarella to serve up to seven years in prison, pay fines and restitution, and accept responsibility for the crimes.
[15] Ciavarella's attorneys and his co-conspirator, Michael Conahan, brought a motion requesting reconsideration of the judge's rejection of the plea agreement.
[41] The Pennsylvania Supreme Court, using its rarely invoked power of "King's Bench jurisdiction", appointed Senior Judge Arthur Grim as special master to review all of Ciavarella's juvenile sentences.
Grim concluded that the kickbacks and Ciavarella's disregard for the juveniles' rights meant that no one who appeared before him had received an impartial hearing.
On March 26, 2009, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court accepted Grim's recommendations and threw out hundreds of Ciavarella's juvenile convictions on the grounds that the defendants' rights had been violated.
[42][43] In early 2009, the Wilkes-Barre daily newspaper The Citizens' Voice accused Judge Ciavarella of improperly concealing a conflict of interest when he rendered a $3.5 million defamation judgment against the paper, and it moved to have the case reopened.
[44] The Pennsylvania Supreme Court appointed Lehigh County President Judge William H. Platt to conduct hearings into the matter.
[46] In early August 2009, the state Supreme Court ordered Luzerne County President Judge Chester Muroski to review a land dispute case that was dismissed by Ciavarella to determine if the ruling was tainted.
SERS ruled that the former judge's guilty pleas to fraud and conspiracy in February provided sufficient grounds to deny the benefits.
The agency based its determination on the Pension Forfeiture Act, which allows for the denial of benefits to anyone convicted of certain crimes related to their public employment.
SERS also refused to repay Ciavarella the $234,000 that he had contributed to the retirement system because the state Department of Public Welfare claimed that he and Conahan are liable for $4.3 million in alleged overpayments it made to two juvenile detention centers.