The Juvenile Law Center, in a brief filed with the state Supreme Court Tuesday, alleged that the Luzerne County District Attorney’s Office “turned a blind eye” as several hundred youths appeared in court there without attorney representation.
The office’s unwillingness to speak out against the “improprieties” found in former Luzerne County Common Pleas Court Judge Mark A. Ciavarella Jr.’s courtroom amounts to prosecutorial misconduct, the brief alleges, and should bar the office from retrying any juveniles who have their records expunged during the high court’s review of Luzerne County’s Juvenile Court from 2003 to 2008.
