Discipline deserved in case of disgraced Judge Orie Melvin

Discipline deserved in case of disgraced Judge Orie Melvin

Published: September 2, 2012



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Judicial opinions often are laced with jargon and technical minutiae that make them indecipherable to laymen.



Not so in a ruling this week by the state Court of Judicial Discipline. President Judge Robert E.J. Curran made plain the court's dismay with suspended Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin. In the process, the court contributed to a string of precedents that have been established in the prosecution of the judge and her two sisters for alleged and, in the case of former state Sen. Jane Orie, confirmed corruption.



Justice Orie Melvin was removed from the court in May, when she was charged with allegedly using her publicly paid judicial staff to conduct political work in her pursuit of a Supreme Court seat in 2003 and 2009.



Last week the Court of Judicial Discipline found that Justice Orie Melvin should not be paid while awaiting the outcome of her case.



"We see this respondent as so single-mindedly occupied with achieving personal aggrandizement that she pressured, intimidated and bullied her clerks and secretaries into performing work on her political campaigns," Curran wrote for the 5-1 majority. "... "We cannot leave this subject without mentioning that assertions that (Justice Orie Melvin) did not know what her sisters were saying and doing and, for that matter, what her staff and her sister's staff were doing, test the patience of the court."



Jane Orie, the former senator, is serving a 2½-to-10-year sentence for using her judicial staff for political work on her own and her sister's campaigns. Janine Orie, a third sister and the judge's chief of staff, has been charged and will be tried with the judge in Allegheny County.



Following Jane Orie's conviction, Allegheny County Judge Jeffrey Manning ruled that she must reimburse the state Senate more than $110,000 that it had paid for her legal defense.



Some legal experts were concerned after the Court of Judicial Discipline terminated Justice Orie Melvin's pay that it might have delved into evidentiary matters best left to the criminal trial court.



But alleged corruption by a judge always is a special case; the issues are not prosecution alone, but deterrence and professional conduct, regardless of the outcome of the criminal case.



The Court of Judicial Discipline has set the appropriate standard. Ideally, that will serve the purpose of preventing it from having to do so again.



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