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Witnesses Tie Reputed Mobster to Pa. Judge
Security guard says she passed envelopes; admitted felon describes meetings
The Legal Intelligencer
July 02, 2009
A pair of witnesses testified during a court hearing Wednesday that reputed northeastern Pennsylvania mob boss William "Billy" D'Elia had envelopes delivered to disgraced former Luzerne County President Judge Michael T. Conahan at the courthouse and that Conahan met with D'Elia and another admitted felon multiple times to discuss fixing cases.
The hearing was ordered by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court after a Wilkes-Barre newspaper argued that a defamation case handed down against the paper by Conahan's colleague, disgraced former Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr., should be vacated. Lawyers for the newspaper are arguing that Conahan helped fix the case on behalf of a friend of D'Elia's.
In petitioning to reopen the case, the newspaper's lawyers cited the judges' guilty pleas in federal court to honest services fraud charges, as well as newspaper articles in The Legal Intelligencer and its sister publication, Pennsylvania Law Weekly, detailing suspicions of case fixing in Luzerne County and ties to criminal figures.
The key witness for the newspaper Wednesday was admitted felon Robert Kulick.
During several of their routine cocktail sessions, D'Elia would discuss with him a defamation case that was pending in the Luzerne County Common Pleas Court, Kulick testified.
Coverage of the case, Joseph v. Scranton Times, was in the Wilkes-Barre papers at the time, Kulick said Wednesday, and D'Elia would get upset when Thomas Joseph, a businessman, would deny any relationship with D'Elia.
A source had told the Citizens' Voice newspaper that federal officials were investigating Joseph to see if he used his direct mail and advertising business to launder money for D'Elia and if his taxi and limousine service was used to traffic guns, drugs and prostitutes between the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton and Lehigh Valley international airports and Atlantic City, N.J., New York City and Philadelphia.
Joseph was never charged with any wrongdoing and sought to distance himself from the reputed mob boss. In his lawsuit against the paper's parent company, he argued that articles written about him damaged his reputation and business.
"It was hilarious," Kulick said of Joseph's denial during the court hearing in Allentown. "I'm sure there's records that money changed hands. I'm sure there's records that Billy D'Elia was Joseph's son's godfather."
And just like everyone knew the real relationship between Joseph and D'Elia, Kulick said, D'Elia purported to know what the outcome of Joseph's defamation case would be.
"According to him, he knew Tommy Joseph was going to win the case," Kulick said. "And we laughed about it."
For more than two hours Kulick's testimony -- which touched on socializing with Luzerne County judges and D'Elia, along with judicial case fixing -- was the central focus of the first day of a multiday hearing ordered by the state Supreme Court.
The justices ordered the hearing in April and assigned Lehigh County Common Pleas Court President Judge William H. Platt to determine whether corruption in the Luzerne County Courthouse played a role in the assignment of Joseph's defamation suit to Ciavarella, who along with Conahan has conditionally pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges.
Attorneys for the Scranton Times, the parent company of the Citizens' Voice newspaper, petitioned the court to use its King's Bench power to reopen the case after the two judges entered their conditional guilty pleas.
