24 Facts About Mark Ciavarella

Mark Ciavarella entered private legal practice, becoming a partner in the firm of Lowery, Mark Ciavarella and Rogers.

Mark Ciavarella was re-elected to a second ten-year term in 2005.

Mark Ciavarella was married to the former Cindy Baer and the couple have three children.

Mark 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, Mark 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, jaywalking, and driving a car over a curb without a driver's licence.

Mark Ciavarella tendered his resignation to Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell on January 23,2009, prior to official publication of the charges.

The plea agreement witnessed by defense attorneys Albert Flora and William Ruzzo called for Mark Ciavarella to serve up to seven years in prison, pay fines and restitution, and accept responsibility for the crimes.

However, Mark Ciavarella denied that there was a connection between the juvenile sentences he rendered and the kickbacks he received.

Mark Ciavarella ruled that Ciavarella had continued to deny that there was a "quid pro quo" between his receipt of money and his jailing of juveniles, instead characterizing the money as a "finder's fee" despite what Judge Kosik felt was the weight of the government's evidence.

Mark Ciavarella was on trial for 38 other counts including accepting numerous payments from Mericle and Powell as well as tax evasion.

Mark Ciavarella appealed his conviction and sentence to the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

On May 24,2013, the Third Circuit vacated one count of the indictment against Mark Ciavarella, but upheld all other charges, as well as his sentence.

Mark Ciavarella initially served his sentence at Federal Correctional Institution, Pekin in Pekin, Illinois.

Mark Ciavarella ordered a new trial on those counts, but allowed the honest services fraud convictions to stand.

On October 1,2019, Mark Ciavarella was disbarred on consent from the practice of law by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Mark Ciavarella is a defendant in a class action lawsuit filed by the Juvenile Law Center on behalf of the juveniles who were adjudicated delinquent by him despite not being represented by counsel or advised of their rights.

Mark Ciavarella has moved to dismiss this lawsuit as it pertains to him based on judicial immunity.

Mark Ciavarella is named as a defendant in three other lawsuits all four lawsuits have been consolidated into one master class action lawsuit which was filed in June and then amended in late August 2009.

Mark Ciavarella's recommendation was partially based on the fact that Ciavarella admitted that he wrongly presided over cases involving clients of Robert J Powell, an attorney who paid Ciavarella and Conahan more than $770,000 in kickbacks.

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 Mark Ciavarella to determine if the ruling was tainted.

Mark Ciavarella dismissed a lawsuit by Emil Malinowski against the bank, a ruling which was upheld by the state Superior Court.

Judge Thomas L Ambro of the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled, in March 2019, that Ciavarella is not entitled to a new trial which would have followed the precedent set by the US Supreme Court's 2016 ruling in McDonnell v United States.

However, Mark Ciavarella agreed to a federal injunction freezing his pension benefits on or about May 27,2009.

Subsequently, the Pennsylvania State Employees' Retirement System denied pension benefits to Mark Ciavarella, reversing its earlier position that he was eligible to receive benefits until he was sentenced.